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"content": "\u003cp>Project-based learning has become a hot topic as educators look for ways to effectively get students solving problems, working collaboratively and producing evidence of their learning. But as educators turn to this \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/project-based-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">long-standing pedagogy\u003c/a> for content delivery, it’s easy to forget to build up the learning skills and dispositions that make the approach successful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t need more individual ways of teaching that only do one small thing,” said Laura Thomas, director of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.antiochne.edu/acsr/\" target=\"_blank\">Antioch Center for School Renewal\u003c/a>. “Good project-based learning pedagogy has all the stuff we are supposed to be doing embedded in it and we just have to be articulate and point to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Effective project-based learning is grounded in a strong learning community, one teachers create and must regularly foster. “Project-based learning requires kids to take risks and they aren’t going to take risks if they don’t trust you or each other,” Thomas said. She suggests teachers co-create a social contract with the class at the beginning of the year and make sure it is a living document that can grow and change. Every joke or put-down is a test of the teacher and she should stop everything to revisit the social contract and discuss violations. When kids are resisting a new kind of learning, it's often because they feel unsafe.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">\"When we focus on the skills and dispositions at the beginning, the depth of the work is much greater. And [students] internalize the skills much more than when it's a separate unit because it's contextualized.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“A lot of teachers don’t understand how important it is to build a learning community,” Thomas said. One of the best ways to do this is through meaningful work, but it’s also important at times to take a break from academics and just play together. A short game outside can refocus students and build trust and teamwork at the same time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Building a community of learners starts by getting to know one another. Talk as a class about who each student is outside of school. It’s not unheard of for kids get to the end of the school year and not even know one another’s names.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s equally important to have good communication with and between students. To do that, students have to be involved in creating the definition of what it means to communicate well. “Instead of telling kids what good communication looks like, you have conversations about what it means to be a good community member, a good friend, a good learning partner or even an organized person,” Thomas said. She’s aware that adults often assume students understand the expectations around softer skills like communication and collaboration without spelling it out. “If it doesn’t have concrete, observable language, the teacher can’t really know if the kids are doing it and the kids won’t know what the teacher is looking for,” Thomas said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"tHqraBiNOmD3aNXLwL1jrTRvfKFxo4fz\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>COOPERATION vs. COLLABORATION\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next step in building a community of learners is collaboration, but first, students have to cooperate. When students cooperate, they are acting under a tacit agreement not to get in one another’s way. Collaboration, on the other hand, is about getting to the final goal together. It’s the understanding that the individual can’t succeed unless every member in the group succeeds. And every member is invested in the project being worked on together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thomas says you get from cooperation to collaboration through meaningful work. And she doesn’t pretend it’s always easy. But she advises teachers to stay in the conflict together with students when they arise. If one student is refusing to engage, sit down with the group and talk out the problem. Maybe that student felt his idea was rejected and is now refusing to participate. Whatever it is, talk it out. “It feels like it’s time consuming, but it doesn’t happen very often,” Thomas said. And, if teachers take the time do this important conflict resolution early and whenever necessary, other students notice and realize they won’t be able to get away with slacking off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paying attention to these underlying structures of the classroom will result in big payoffs in the depth and quality of the project-based learning students do, Thomas said. It changes the classroom culture. But, it also must be maintained. Teachers have to keep their eyes open for signs of trouble. One way to do this is to have students write down who they want to work with on the next project. Take notice of who is always chosen and who is never chosen as a partner. That will provide clues to the state of the learning community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>PACE YOURSELF\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Building a learning community is a fundamental step to creating the kind of classroom culture that supports engaged students exploring a real world problem resulting in a created demonstration of knowledge gained. But it’s also important to recognize where the learners are in their school careers. Middle and high school educators are teaching students who have often been taught for more than six years with a more traditional style. Many don’t know how to do project-based learning, are scared by autonomy in learning and will resist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The biggest challenge is figuring out how far and how fast you can implement,” Thomas said, “And recognizing that it still counts if it’s a teeny tiny thing that the kids are doing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New teachers sometimes start their careers energized to bring progressive, constructivist, project-based approaches to underserved kids, particularly in disadvantaged communities, only to find \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/07/the-struggles-and-realities-of-student-driven-learning-and-byod/\" target=\"_blank\">kids and parents dislike it\u003c/a>. But, Thomas says they often resist because it’s unfamiliar, or they believe wealthier kids are getting something different, or it requires more of them. They aren’t ready to be thrown into the deep end of student-centered learning without a lot of scaffolding to help them see they can do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thomas had an experience similar to this as a new teacher. She taught 11th grade English and didn’t have much success implementing project-based learning. But she didn’t have any of the tools she now has to build a community of learners, to unpack her own biases, to listen to her students’ experiences of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/04/04/how-can-teachers-address-race-issues-in-class-ask-students/\" target=\"_blank\">institutional racism and educational violence\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If I had been willing to get to know their contexts; if I had talked less and listened more, then I think I could have been very successful,” Thomas said. Too often, teachers hold constructivist approaches hostage to lower level learning. Students don’t get to do a project until they pass a vocabulary quiz, for example.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Give kids the benefit of the doubt on that,” Thomas said. Often when teachers give students an interesting challenge, kids will end up discovering much of the content the teacher had set aside time to cover. They help one another and discover they knew more than they realized. It’s easy to assume students aren’t ready to solve a problem because they approach it differently from the teacher. But they may be coming from a different context and often the hoops they’re asked to jump through in a more traditional classroom come off as demoralizing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When they refuse to engage in our insulting pedagogy, we assume that they don’t want to learn,” Thomas said. This is where she thinks it’s important that teachers examine their own biases. It's natural to be suspicious of things that are different from ourselves, that instinct evolved to protect us from danger, but humans are capable of activating higher-order thinking to overcome those basic instincts. Over time, educators can develop themselves to be the kind of educators they want to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Thomas is convinced project-based learning is how humans are meant to learn. Other methods developed to cram a bunch of information into students’ brains in a short amount of time just don’t work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Too often, skills are segmented in school, with a separate curricula for each subject, for social and emotional learning, for study skills. Teaching through discovery and requiring students to use skills and dispositions whose definitions have been co-constructed is much more effective. “When we focus on the skills and dispositions at the beginning, the depth of the work is much greater,” Thomas said. “And [students] internalize the skills much more than when it’s a separate unit because it’s contextualized.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Along the way, students gain the tools to learn how to learn, the most valuable skill of them all.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Project-based learning has become a hot topic as educators look for ways to effectively get students solving problems, working collaboratively and producing evidence of their learning. But as educators turn to this \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/project-based-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">long-standing pedagogy\u003c/a> for content delivery, it’s easy to forget to build up the learning skills and dispositions that make the approach successful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We don’t need more individual ways of teaching that only do one small thing,” said Laura Thomas, director of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.antiochne.edu/acsr/\" target=\"_blank\">Antioch Center for School Renewal\u003c/a>. “Good project-based learning pedagogy has all the stuff we are supposed to be doing embedded in it and we just have to be articulate and point to it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Effective project-based learning is grounded in a strong learning community, one teachers create and must regularly foster. “Project-based learning requires kids to take risks and they aren’t going to take risks if they don’t trust you or each other,” Thomas said. She suggests teachers co-create a social contract with the class at the beginning of the year and make sure it is a living document that can grow and change. Every joke or put-down is a test of the teacher and she should stop everything to revisit the social contract and discuss violations. When kids are resisting a new kind of learning, it's often because they feel unsafe.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">\"When we focus on the skills and dispositions at the beginning, the depth of the work is much greater. And [students] internalize the skills much more than when it's a separate unit because it's contextualized.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“A lot of teachers don’t understand how important it is to build a learning community,” Thomas said. One of the best ways to do this is through meaningful work, but it’s also important at times to take a break from academics and just play together. A short game outside can refocus students and build trust and teamwork at the same time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Building a community of learners starts by getting to know one another. Talk as a class about who each student is outside of school. It’s not unheard of for kids get to the end of the school year and not even know one another’s names.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s equally important to have good communication with and between students. To do that, students have to be involved in creating the definition of what it means to communicate well. “Instead of telling kids what good communication looks like, you have conversations about what it means to be a good community member, a good friend, a good learning partner or even an organized person,” Thomas said. She’s aware that adults often assume students understand the expectations around softer skills like communication and collaboration without spelling it out. “If it doesn’t have concrete, observable language, the teacher can’t really know if the kids are doing it and the kids won’t know what the teacher is looking for,” Thomas said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>COOPERATION vs. COLLABORATION\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The next step in building a community of learners is collaboration, but first, students have to cooperate. When students cooperate, they are acting under a tacit agreement not to get in one another’s way. Collaboration, on the other hand, is about getting to the final goal together. It’s the understanding that the individual can’t succeed unless every member in the group succeeds. And every member is invested in the project being worked on together.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thomas says you get from cooperation to collaboration through meaningful work. And she doesn’t pretend it’s always easy. But she advises teachers to stay in the conflict together with students when they arise. If one student is refusing to engage, sit down with the group and talk out the problem. Maybe that student felt his idea was rejected and is now refusing to participate. Whatever it is, talk it out. “It feels like it’s time consuming, but it doesn’t happen very often,” Thomas said. And, if teachers take the time do this important conflict resolution early and whenever necessary, other students notice and realize they won’t be able to get away with slacking off.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paying attention to these underlying structures of the classroom will result in big payoffs in the depth and quality of the project-based learning students do, Thomas said. It changes the classroom culture. But, it also must be maintained. Teachers have to keep their eyes open for signs of trouble. One way to do this is to have students write down who they want to work with on the next project. Take notice of who is always chosen and who is never chosen as a partner. That will provide clues to the state of the learning community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>PACE YOURSELF\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Building a learning community is a fundamental step to creating the kind of classroom culture that supports engaged students exploring a real world problem resulting in a created demonstration of knowledge gained. But it’s also important to recognize where the learners are in their school careers. Middle and high school educators are teaching students who have often been taught for more than six years with a more traditional style. Many don’t know how to do project-based learning, are scared by autonomy in learning and will resist.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The biggest challenge is figuring out how far and how fast you can implement,” Thomas said, “And recognizing that it still counts if it’s a teeny tiny thing that the kids are doing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>New teachers sometimes start their careers energized to bring progressive, constructivist, project-based approaches to underserved kids, particularly in disadvantaged communities, only to find \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/07/the-struggles-and-realities-of-student-driven-learning-and-byod/\" target=\"_blank\">kids and parents dislike it\u003c/a>. But, Thomas says they often resist because it’s unfamiliar, or they believe wealthier kids are getting something different, or it requires more of them. They aren’t ready to be thrown into the deep end of student-centered learning without a lot of scaffolding to help them see they can do it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Thomas had an experience similar to this as a new teacher. She taught 11th grade English and didn’t have much success implementing project-based learning. But she didn’t have any of the tools she now has to build a community of learners, to unpack her own biases, to listen to her students’ experiences of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/04/04/how-can-teachers-address-race-issues-in-class-ask-students/\" target=\"_blank\">institutional racism and educational violence\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If I had been willing to get to know their contexts; if I had talked less and listened more, then I think I could have been very successful,” Thomas said. Too often, teachers hold constructivist approaches hostage to lower level learning. Students don’t get to do a project until they pass a vocabulary quiz, for example.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Give kids the benefit of the doubt on that,” Thomas said. Often when teachers give students an interesting challenge, kids will end up discovering much of the content the teacher had set aside time to cover. They help one another and discover they knew more than they realized. It’s easy to assume students aren’t ready to solve a problem because they approach it differently from the teacher. But they may be coming from a different context and often the hoops they’re asked to jump through in a more traditional classroom come off as demoralizing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When they refuse to engage in our insulting pedagogy, we assume that they don’t want to learn,” Thomas said. This is where she thinks it’s important that teachers examine their own biases. It's natural to be suspicious of things that are different from ourselves, that instinct evolved to protect us from danger, but humans are capable of activating higher-order thinking to overcome those basic instincts. Over time, educators can develop themselves to be the kind of educators they want to be.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, Thomas is convinced project-based learning is how humans are meant to learn. Other methods developed to cram a bunch of information into students’ brains in a short amount of time just don’t work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Too often, skills are segmented in school, with a separate curricula for each subject, for social and emotional learning, for study skills. Teaching through discovery and requiring students to use skills and dispositions whose definitions have been co-constructed is much more effective. “When we focus on the skills and dispositions at the beginning, the depth of the work is much greater,” Thomas said. “And [students] internalize the skills much more than when it’s a separate unit because it’s contextualized.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "How Inquiry Can Enable Students to Become Modern Day de Tocquevilles",
"title": "How Inquiry Can Enable Students to Become Modern Day de Tocquevilles",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39316\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/02/how-inquiry-can-enable-students-to-become-modern-day-de-tocquevilles/de_tocqueville/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-39316\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-39316\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/02/de_Tocqueville.gif\" alt=\"Alexis de Tocqueville\" width=\"640\" height=\"960\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alexis de Tocqueville\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Some teachers are skeptical about “student-driven learning,” suspecting that it's really just another chance for unfocused social time. It can often be hard to see behind the jargon the careful planning and teacher support necessary to ensure that students not only stay focused, but also produce high-level work. Educators often wonder how students can all be working on different projects but acquiring the same skills. It may seem challenging to keep track of 30 kids investigating 30 different issues, but when inquiry-based teaching is done well, that chaotic swirl of ideas and needs is based on a strong foundation of planning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia is known for its dedication to inquiry, practiced through project-based learning with public school students. As a magnet school, SLA does have an application process, but many students are not coming from schools where they experienced inquiry learning before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An example of this approach can be seen in Joshua Block’s senior social studies class. Recently, his students put democracy through the wringer, investigating American democracy not as a static system developed hundreds of years ago by the founding fathers but as a living, breathing expression of citizenship today.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">'The students are so much more connected to their work and passionate about it that they're actually doing work that's higher quality than they've ever done before.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>To do this, Block first introduced students to the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political thinker who visited the United States in the mid-1800s and wrote about his observations of American democracy. With de Tocqueville’s primary text as a guide, Block asked his students to research and argue three perspectives on American democracy that aren't common knowledge and that resonate with them personally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students chose diverse projects, including social movements like Black Lives Matter, the effect of stereotyping, whether the American Dream exists, how the food industry affects people’s lives, the intersection of poverty and education, even juvenile incarceration. They analyzed their topics in a paper, made a multimedia presentation related to the topic, and designed and built a personal website to display their work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not just the typical, watered-down way of looking at race in America, but a combination of their own experience, their reading and interviews with people in their communities,” Block said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He believes the project is successful because students have so much choice within the broad parameters he sets. That doesn’t mean they can pick an easy argument and be done quickly. Block’s job as a teacher in this environment is to continually push the student to think from new perspectives, to find more sources and to use them more skillfully to bolster the argument. To do this, he asks lots of questions that spark them to push in new directions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[vimeo 116799343 w=500 h=281]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://vimeo.com/116799343\">Stereotypes and American Democracy\u003c/a> from \u003ca href=\"http://vimeo.com/user14101507\">Marlyn Mooney\u003c/a> on \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com\">Vimeo\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The students are so much more connected to their work and passionate about it that they’re actually doing work that’s higher quality than they’ve ever done before,” Block said. He attributes part of this to the fact that students are presenting their ideas both through writing and a creative multimedia project of their choice. The projects live on a \u003ca href=\"http://democracyinamerica2015.weebly.com/\" target=\"_blank\">public facing website\u003c/a>. The authentic, worldwide audience -- coupled with students’ passion for their topics -- means that they are hoping to sway public opinion with their work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt really strongly about all of the topics I’m talking about, mostly about poverty and education,” said \u003ca href=\"http://lcohen97.wix.com/lizafrommarshallst#!chapter-2/c19uf\" target=\"_blank\">Liza Cohen\u003c/a>. She investigated various aspects of socioeconomic disparities in educational opportunities. The experience has her fired up to go to college, where she sees it as her civic responsibility to get herself educated and work on these issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STANDARDS AND SUPPORT BEHIND THE SCENES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While students had lots of choice in what to research and the kinds of textual evidence they would use to support their arguments, Block doesn’t give them an assignment like this and expect them to come back two months later with perfect projects. Instead, he has built in deadlines, peer review and class work time, so he knows where students are at throughout the process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"FFpflT5kRNzjfdRj8FJCqk7azqBK4dnI\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m just assisting them to create this thing that we’ve all agreed is an important thing to do,” Block said. “It’s like we’re on a shared mission together to produce the best product possible.” When students turn in rough drafts, Block sits down with them and asks what they know they need to improve on. Then he’ll give them feedback he sees. At other points, students review one another’s work. Block says that often students give the same critique he would have offered. Students said seeing one another’s work helped them see where their own was lacking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had to edit other people’s papers and give feedback, and you read it and realize it's amazing,” said \u003ca href=\"http://mooneygov.weebly.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Marlyn Mooney\u003c/a>. She loved learning about the topics her classmates were working on and continuing the conversation around big ideas beyond class. One part of her project investigated the food industry and some of its unhealthy practices. The issue has become a personal passion for her that she shares with her friends, perhaps more than they would like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Block says in a class period he will spend about five minutes reminding students about upcoming due dates and things to keep in mind as they work. The other 60 minutes he spends moving through the classroom, asking questions to push students farther in their thinking, checking in on students' progress and giving feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[vimeo 107001402 w=500 h=281]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://vimeo.com/107001402\">Democracy and Education\u003c/a> from \u003ca href=\"http://vimeo.com/user14128750\">Amani Bey\u003c/a> on \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com\">Vimeo\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want to give feedback as much as possible while it’s in process and give students a chance to work on skills they are still developing,” Block said. He sees it as a mentoring relationship, and is certain that if he gave just one deadline the quality of work would be dramatically lower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It takes a lot of trust and confidence,” Block said, acknowledging that most teachers didn’t grow up with this kind of education. “If people miss some of the steps, then it’s not successful and they think it’s a waste,” he said. But it takes time to grow as a teacher in this system, which is why Block believes teacher mentorship is so important. He and his colleagues are continually tweaking projects to reflect lessons learned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STUDENTS TAKE PRIDE IN THEIR WORK\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m most proud that I thoughtfully completed this entire project, and I walked away knowing 10 times more than I did before and feeling 10 times more involved than I did before,” Cohen said. “I feel like mentally, emotionally and physically, I got something out of the project.” She says that beats any grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One thing that I’ve learned about myself is that I can articulate how I feel in a very solid sense and that other people will listen,” said Ron Harper. “I finally realized I have a voice and I can use it. And that feels good.” He focused on juvenile incarceration, as well as the power of social movements like Black Lives Matter. Harper says the research he did on his own made him sad, but that he was motivated to keep reading because he cared about the topics he chose.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">'I think it's important to give students freedom on writing and reading, because it's hard to enjoy a subject you’re forced to research.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Other students expressed their appreciation for a project that let them examine society and their place in it. Many students struggled to condense all their research into cohesive, clear arguments, but they often expressed pride both in their writing and in their multimedia representations of issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a reflection submitted to Block once the project was finished, \u003ca href=\"http://lawanddisorder.weebly.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Molly Olshin \u003c/a>wrote: “Research, media, and writing is not that difficult when you have the freedom to write on the subject you want. I think it's important to give students freedom on writing and reading, because it's hard to enjoy a subject you’re forced to research, especially if you don't [like] the subject.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another student, Darya Nemati wrote: “I obviously learned way more about the three topics I was investigating, but I think I also was able to dig deeper and learn about myself as a learner. I was able to investigate topics that were outside of my comfort zone and with each chapter I was able to delve just a little deeper into my research and analysis. “\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students weren’t shy about talking about their challenges as well. \u003ca href=\"http://moderndaydebey.weebly.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Amani Bey \u003c/a>wrote: “I struggled with slimming my idea down and at the same time writing a bunch about it. I think it made me stronger. To be able to write on an extremely particular claim and to expand on it and all its nuances have made me a great thinker.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BLOCK'S TAKEAWAYS ON INQUIRY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>“This is not an assignment where there’s one right answer and where I have a specific vision of what the final product will look like,” Block said. “I give them the framework and students fill in the gaps. They do it through their own curiosity and creation.” That is a key takeaway for teachers interested in teaching with inquiry. If students are really allowed to bring themselves to their work, their final products won’t all come out in the same form. But that doesn't mean they can’t all be evaluated using the same rubric and set of standards.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Block thinks about what standards he wants the project to hit first and then builds backward from that point. In this project, students are meeting literacy and research standards through extensive individual research, lots of writing, crafting arguments, interpreting texts from both primary and secondary sources, and using that evidence to support their claims. Whether the student is looking at racism in America or the plight of undocumented people, those standards are embedded.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Inquiry is based around the act of questioning. As the teacher, that means asking common questions like, “what is the main argument of your piece,” but it also means asking questions about students’ ideas and sources that push them to look behind what can often be a one-dimensional viewpoint.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Structure long-term projects with deadlines (research document with quotes, rough draft, final draft, multimedia project), lots of formative feedback both from peers and from the teacher, self-evaluations and reflection pieces so that students can look back at what they took away from the work.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Model good work throughout the process. That could mean holding up a student's clear introductory paragraph or reading a de Tocqueville observation together as a class. “I’m breaking down the distinction between professional work and student work,” Block said. He wants students to feel that their voices are just as important as those they read in books. Reminding them that their work is part of a large conversation around these issues helps them see why their work deserves the time and effort they’re putting into it.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Teaching this way is exhausting, but also incredibly rewarding. “It’s very grueling, but it’s also incredibly stimulating,” Block said, “I’m excited about their ideas and their work.”\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Block says it’s amazing to see what young people create when they are given freedom to choose. He’s also always impressed at how the questions of democracy leak out of the classroom and into everyday conversations. Students come in and talk to him about what they've been reading or he'll hear them discussing popular songs in new ways. Investigating democracy has taught them to look at their own world in new ways.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Observations of early America by Alexis de Tocqueville helped articulate the nation's values. With the guidance of an inquiry based teacher, students create their own interpretations of democracy in America. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39316\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/02/how-inquiry-can-enable-students-to-become-modern-day-de-tocquevilles/de_tocqueville/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-39316\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-39316\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/02/de_Tocqueville.gif\" alt=\"Alexis de Tocqueville\" width=\"640\" height=\"960\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alexis de Tocqueville\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Some teachers are skeptical about “student-driven learning,” suspecting that it's really just another chance for unfocused social time. It can often be hard to see behind the jargon the careful planning and teacher support necessary to ensure that students not only stay focused, but also produce high-level work. Educators often wonder how students can all be working on different projects but acquiring the same skills. It may seem challenging to keep track of 30 kids investigating 30 different issues, but when inquiry-based teaching is done well, that chaotic swirl of ideas and needs is based on a strong foundation of planning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia is known for its dedication to inquiry, practiced through project-based learning with public school students. As a magnet school, SLA does have an application process, but many students are not coming from schools where they experienced inquiry learning before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>An example of this approach can be seen in Joshua Block’s senior social studies class. Recently, his students put democracy through the wringer, investigating American democracy not as a static system developed hundreds of years ago by the founding fathers but as a living, breathing expression of citizenship today.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">'The students are so much more connected to their work and passionate about it that they're actually doing work that's higher quality than they've ever done before.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>To do this, Block first introduced students to the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political thinker who visited the United States in the mid-1800s and wrote about his observations of American democracy. With de Tocqueville’s primary text as a guide, Block asked his students to research and argue three perspectives on American democracy that aren't common knowledge and that resonate with them personally.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students chose diverse projects, including social movements like Black Lives Matter, the effect of stereotyping, whether the American Dream exists, how the food industry affects people’s lives, the intersection of poverty and education, even juvenile incarceration. They analyzed their topics in a paper, made a multimedia presentation related to the topic, and designed and built a personal website to display their work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s not just the typical, watered-down way of looking at race in America, but a combination of their own experience, their reading and interviews with people in their communities,” Block said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He believes the project is successful because students have so much choice within the broad parameters he sets. That doesn’t mean they can pick an easy argument and be done quickly. Block’s job as a teacher in this environment is to continually push the student to think from new perspectives, to find more sources and to use them more skillfully to bolster the argument. To do this, he asks lots of questions that spark them to push in new directions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://vimeo.com/116799343\">Stereotypes and American Democracy\u003c/a> from \u003ca href=\"http://vimeo.com/user14101507\">Marlyn Mooney\u003c/a> on \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com\">Vimeo\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The students are so much more connected to their work and passionate about it that they’re actually doing work that’s higher quality than they’ve ever done before,” Block said. He attributes part of this to the fact that students are presenting their ideas both through writing and a creative multimedia project of their choice. The projects live on a \u003ca href=\"http://democracyinamerica2015.weebly.com/\" target=\"_blank\">public facing website\u003c/a>. The authentic, worldwide audience -- coupled with students’ passion for their topics -- means that they are hoping to sway public opinion with their work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt really strongly about all of the topics I’m talking about, mostly about poverty and education,” said \u003ca href=\"http://lcohen97.wix.com/lizafrommarshallst#!chapter-2/c19uf\" target=\"_blank\">Liza Cohen\u003c/a>. She investigated various aspects of socioeconomic disparities in educational opportunities. The experience has her fired up to go to college, where she sees it as her civic responsibility to get herself educated and work on these issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STANDARDS AND SUPPORT BEHIND THE SCENES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While students had lots of choice in what to research and the kinds of textual evidence they would use to support their arguments, Block doesn’t give them an assignment like this and expect them to come back two months later with perfect projects. Instead, he has built in deadlines, peer review and class work time, so he knows where students are at throughout the process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m just assisting them to create this thing that we’ve all agreed is an important thing to do,” Block said. “It’s like we’re on a shared mission together to produce the best product possible.” When students turn in rough drafts, Block sits down with them and asks what they know they need to improve on. Then he’ll give them feedback he sees. At other points, students review one another’s work. Block says that often students give the same critique he would have offered. Students said seeing one another’s work helped them see where their own was lacking.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We had to edit other people’s papers and give feedback, and you read it and realize it's amazing,” said \u003ca href=\"http://mooneygov.weebly.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Marlyn Mooney\u003c/a>. She loved learning about the topics her classmates were working on and continuing the conversation around big ideas beyond class. One part of her project investigated the food industry and some of its unhealthy practices. The issue has become a personal passion for her that she shares with her friends, perhaps more than they would like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Block says in a class period he will spend about five minutes reminding students about upcoming due dates and things to keep in mind as they work. The other 60 minutes he spends moving through the classroom, asking questions to push students farther in their thinking, checking in on students' progress and giving feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://vimeo.com/107001402\">Democracy and Education\u003c/a> from \u003ca href=\"http://vimeo.com/user14128750\">Amani Bey\u003c/a> on \u003ca href=\"https://vimeo.com\">Vimeo\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want to give feedback as much as possible while it’s in process and give students a chance to work on skills they are still developing,” Block said. He sees it as a mentoring relationship, and is certain that if he gave just one deadline the quality of work would be dramatically lower.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It takes a lot of trust and confidence,” Block said, acknowledging that most teachers didn’t grow up with this kind of education. “If people miss some of the steps, then it’s not successful and they think it’s a waste,” he said. But it takes time to grow as a teacher in this system, which is why Block believes teacher mentorship is so important. He and his colleagues are continually tweaking projects to reflect lessons learned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STUDENTS TAKE PRIDE IN THEIR WORK\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’m most proud that I thoughtfully completed this entire project, and I walked away knowing 10 times more than I did before and feeling 10 times more involved than I did before,” Cohen said. “I feel like mentally, emotionally and physically, I got something out of the project.” She says that beats any grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One thing that I’ve learned about myself is that I can articulate how I feel in a very solid sense and that other people will listen,” said Ron Harper. “I finally realized I have a voice and I can use it. And that feels good.” He focused on juvenile incarceration, as well as the power of social movements like Black Lives Matter. Harper says the research he did on his own made him sad, but that he was motivated to keep reading because he cared about the topics he chose.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">'I think it's important to give students freedom on writing and reading, because it's hard to enjoy a subject you’re forced to research.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Other students expressed their appreciation for a project that let them examine society and their place in it. Many students struggled to condense all their research into cohesive, clear arguments, but they often expressed pride both in their writing and in their multimedia representations of issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a reflection submitted to Block once the project was finished, \u003ca href=\"http://lawanddisorder.weebly.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Molly Olshin \u003c/a>wrote: “Research, media, and writing is not that difficult when you have the freedom to write on the subject you want. I think it's important to give students freedom on writing and reading, because it's hard to enjoy a subject you’re forced to research, especially if you don't [like] the subject.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Another student, Darya Nemati wrote: “I obviously learned way more about the three topics I was investigating, but I think I also was able to dig deeper and learn about myself as a learner. I was able to investigate topics that were outside of my comfort zone and with each chapter I was able to delve just a little deeper into my research and analysis. “\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students weren’t shy about talking about their challenges as well. \u003ca href=\"http://moderndaydebey.weebly.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Amani Bey \u003c/a>wrote: “I struggled with slimming my idea down and at the same time writing a bunch about it. I think it made me stronger. To be able to write on an extremely particular claim and to expand on it and all its nuances have made me a great thinker.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BLOCK'S TAKEAWAYS ON INQUIRY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>“This is not an assignment where there’s one right answer and where I have a specific vision of what the final product will look like,” Block said. “I give them the framework and students fill in the gaps. They do it through their own curiosity and creation.” That is a key takeaway for teachers interested in teaching with inquiry. If students are really allowed to bring themselves to their work, their final products won’t all come out in the same form. But that doesn't mean they can’t all be evaluated using the same rubric and set of standards.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Block thinks about what standards he wants the project to hit first and then builds backward from that point. In this project, students are meeting literacy and research standards through extensive individual research, lots of writing, crafting arguments, interpreting texts from both primary and secondary sources, and using that evidence to support their claims. Whether the student is looking at racism in America or the plight of undocumented people, those standards are embedded.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Inquiry is based around the act of questioning. As the teacher, that means asking common questions like, “what is the main argument of your piece,” but it also means asking questions about students’ ideas and sources that push them to look behind what can often be a one-dimensional viewpoint.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Structure long-term projects with deadlines (research document with quotes, rough draft, final draft, multimedia project), lots of formative feedback both from peers and from the teacher, self-evaluations and reflection pieces so that students can look back at what they took away from the work.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Model good work throughout the process. That could mean holding up a student's clear introductory paragraph or reading a de Tocqueville observation together as a class. “I’m breaking down the distinction between professional work and student work,” Block said. He wants students to feel that their voices are just as important as those they read in books. Reminding them that their work is part of a large conversation around these issues helps them see why their work deserves the time and effort they’re putting into it.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Teaching this way is exhausting, but also incredibly rewarding. “It’s very grueling, but it’s also incredibly stimulating,” Block said, “I’m excited about their ideas and their work.”\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Block says it’s amazing to see what young people create when they are given freedom to choose. He’s also always impressed at how the questions of democracy leak out of the classroom and into everyday conversations. Students come in and talk to him about what they've been reading or he'll hear them discussing popular songs in new ways. Investigating democracy has taught them to look at their own world in new ways.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Why Even 'Good' Schools Benefit From Trying Fresh Ideas",
"title": "Why Even 'Good' Schools Benefit From Trying Fresh Ideas",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39148\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/jef_safi/4605548723/in/photolist-81YDbt-aTJnGR-g69Xg-4S7piz-3HZmyZ-5pw3gK-dDtSze-uDksh-b3V8ue-CU4fC-sATrK-5kJQRh-dDzgzo-5t2yNG-oe6U2-uDnoG-azRRXP-2evASh-dLeKtW-84o17r-LFqLh-u6mYe-xs1DZ-6EQzRP-vTVyU-eMj8Jq-8iwTEA-8NnYhF-95A2eK-8EWtcC-JEvyc-3eb3qZ-Hp9XF-8iwTEb-5ymv7y-8jxm1C-9UgZfY-3ZyLB3-Rw7VR-kVnxd-6NwxoZ-6tWDy1-3HZhDn-beNXke-aTJnGF-86fPzW-3HZhCH-3beyf4-2NfzuD-7GufSz\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-39148\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/01/Tangramming-Jef-Safi.gif\" alt=\"Flickr/Jef Safi \" width=\"640\" height=\"960\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Flickr/Jef Safi\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">More and more schools are breaking away from traditional school models to try new approaches that educators hope will engage students and stimulate a life-long love of learning. Often the most adventurous experimenters are in struggling schools where it is obvious that the status quo is failing students. \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/finding-the-most-creative-ways-to-help-students-advance-at-their-own-pace/\" target=\"_blank\">Radical shake-ups at “high-achieving” schools are less common\u003c/a> -- it’s hard to see the need for change when test scores are high and kids are getting into prestigious colleges. But disengaged and bored students are found even at successful schools; kids are just more adept at jumping through the requisite hoops to achieve what they've been told will lead to a good life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TRYING SOMETHING NEW\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Greenwich High School in Connecticut is one such high-performing school. It is located in an affluent area with 14 percent of its students eligible for free and reduced price lunch. It's also a big school with an emphasis on testing and Advanced Placement courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">'There's got to be something else to make this stuff stick a little better.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>But even with its apparent success, Greenwich headmaster Chris Winters quietly tapped a select group of teachers to explore what a radically different kind of public high school experience might look like. After dreaming together a few times a month over the course of a year, the school received a grant from a local non-profit, Greenwich Alliance, so that \u003ca href=\"http://ghsinnovationlab.com/our-team/\" target=\"_blank\">five teachers could plan and recruit\u003c/a> for their big experiment -- what they’re calling \u003ca href=\"http://ghsinnovationlab.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Innovation Lab\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was clear from the beginning that it wasn't going to be a top-down initiative,” said Brian Walach, a math teacher and member of the Innovation Lab teaching team. The headmaster was clear that the program had to fit within the constraints of the public school system, but otherwise he gave the teaching team freedom to come up with a program that would excite students to learn on their own, connect subject areas and dive deeply into individual passions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>WHAT WILL IT LOOK LIKE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Freshmen at Greenwich are currently applying for 90 spots in the Innovation Lab where they will take all their math, English, social studies and science classes for the next three years (although students can opt out of the program if they don't like it). Students will study big questions that tie the subjects together -- things like climate change or logic as expressed through different disciplines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each quarter will follow a seminar cycle where big questions are discussed, researched, deepened and connected to the real-world. That could mean interdisciplinary discussions, modules focused on developing subject-specific skills or studio time to dig into a particularly interesting aspect that can be brought back to the group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"mfz6IV92AfT29hq6X4VpvPy6TxqOn5nQ\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can check off a ton of boxes on the stuff we need to cover while still making it interesting and connecting the dots between things,” Walach said. In this way, the Innovation Lab teachers expect to teach all the standards public school students are supposed to learn, but without following a pacing guide or textbook.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The seminar cycle will take four weeks of the quarter and is followed by an immersion week where students get to drill down on an aspect of the seminar that particularly interests them, reaching out to experts in the field or going out to see the ideas work. “We’re looking at immersion week as a moment when students can step back from what school feels like and connect with what this looks like in the real-world and get immersed in that experience,” Walach said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After five weeks of seminar and immersion, students will get the chance to design a solution for a real-world problem they’ve identified through research and study. They’ll work independently, with support from teachers, to design and build a product that meets the need they’ve identified. At the end each will present his or her project to the group in a showcase of student-designed and built products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change will be a big part of first quarter sophomore year. Together students and teachers will examine questions like: how do mathematicians and scientists differ in how they make claims about the empirical evidence of climate change. Students will analyze climate science data, which Walach says involves a lot of Algebra II concepts, and discuss how climate deniers construct their arguments. In social studies, they’ll look at how policy arguments are formulated, how that logic works in comparison to something like a mathematical proof, and how logical frameworks from various disciplines are different from one another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39105\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/01/Greenwich-cycle.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-39105\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/01/Greenwich-cycle-300x329.jpg\" alt=\"An Innovation Lab graph showing ho seminars, design and immersion in the real world work together.\" width=\"300\" height=\"329\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An Innovation Lab graph showing ho seminars, design and immersion in the real world work together.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In English, they may look at how satire can influence both personal and political decision making. They might examine Mark Twain’s satire as an example, analyzing his critiques for facts and perception. And rather than taking a test to demonstrate understanding, the teaching team will be looking at alternate forms of applied assessment. For example, students might write and produce a satire of climate change deniers in the spirit of The Daily Show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>THE MOTIVATION\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s got to be something else to make this stuff stick a little better,” Walach said. “If my goal is to have my students pass my final at the end of the year, then maybe I should keep teaching math as we are right now. But if we want students to be able to apply math to the real world, it’s not working.” He’s tired of watching students grind through school just because they know they have to show colleges a committed, consistent record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want to give them an experience where they get to learn something they’re actually passionate about, that’s what school’s about,” Walach said. And there were a lot of things about traditional teaching that annoyed him, like students’ obsession with grades. Math is often considered to be an outlier, not part of interdisciplinary approaches because of the belief that its linear and certain concepts must be taught before others can be broached. Walach no longer believes that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Now that I’ve actually done it, I don’t think it’s really that hard after you get some practice talking about subjects in more than one way,” Walach said. “I’m excited to talk about math differently.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">'I feel really motivated when I learn something I enjoy learning.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Similar motivations drove the other teachers involved in Innovation lab. Science teacher Dr. Sarah Golin has experience as a researcher. She’s long wanted to teach science like she learned it in graduate school, when she was the most engaged with her work. “I think for science teachers to shift into project-based learning, they need to have that experience themselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For his part, social studies teacher Michael Belanger found himself pushing his students to ask deeper questions and reveling in the discussions that came from them. “The time I enjoy teaching most is when I’m helping kids discover things on their own or working in small groups,” Belanger said. “So when I heard about Innovation Lab, that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do in my classes, except we’ll be doing it in a more interdisciplinary way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The five teachers who’ve worked to make Innovation Lab a reality know that the 90 kids who may take part are only a small portion of the more than 2,500 students at the school. But they hope to provide an example of rigorous, connected learning that doesn’t rely on traditional means like AP classes to give students interesting and challenging ways to learn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CAN THIS BE DONE ELSEWHERE?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Innovation Lab has several things working in its favor. The school is located in an affluent district and has more access to resources than many of the nation's poorest schools. The headmaster supports the effort and actively sought funding to free up some of his most creative teachers to make an idea a reality. And the team of teachers have been extraordinarily committed to creating a new reality at their school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39109\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/01/Greenwich-chart.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-39109\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/01/Greenwich-chart-300x347.jpg\" alt=\"The Innovation Lab team has worked hard to explain to prospective participants how the program fits in with the rest of school.\" width=\"300\" height=\"347\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Innovation Lab team has worked hard to explain to prospective participants how the program fits in with the rest of school.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Despite these advantages, the teaching team is adamant that this idea is replicable in public schools elsewhere if leaders identify likely teachers, give them time to dream and plan, and make sure the program is teacher-driven. They’re clear that every school has its own culture and needs that will dictate what a new program looks like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You can’t take a model and transpose it onto a different community or a different school, but it’s important to experiment with alternative learning environments,” Golin said. This team of teachers has been convinced by visits to other non-traditional schools that have seen success reaching a wide variety of students like The Springfield Renaissance School or High Tech High. This work is happening in pockets throughout the country and educators who have jumped on board find a community of like-minded educators to support them through the experience.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39148\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.flickr.com/photos/jef_safi/4605548723/in/photolist-81YDbt-aTJnGR-g69Xg-4S7piz-3HZmyZ-5pw3gK-dDtSze-uDksh-b3V8ue-CU4fC-sATrK-5kJQRh-dDzgzo-5t2yNG-oe6U2-uDnoG-azRRXP-2evASh-dLeKtW-84o17r-LFqLh-u6mYe-xs1DZ-6EQzRP-vTVyU-eMj8Jq-8iwTEA-8NnYhF-95A2eK-8EWtcC-JEvyc-3eb3qZ-Hp9XF-8iwTEb-5ymv7y-8jxm1C-9UgZfY-3ZyLB3-Rw7VR-kVnxd-6NwxoZ-6tWDy1-3HZhDn-beNXke-aTJnGF-86fPzW-3HZhCH-3beyf4-2NfzuD-7GufSz\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-39148\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/01/Tangramming-Jef-Safi.gif\" alt=\"Flickr/Jef Safi \" width=\"640\" height=\"960\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Flickr/Jef Safi\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">More and more schools are breaking away from traditional school models to try new approaches that educators hope will engage students and stimulate a life-long love of learning. Often the most adventurous experimenters are in struggling schools where it is obvious that the status quo is failing students. \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/finding-the-most-creative-ways-to-help-students-advance-at-their-own-pace/\" target=\"_blank\">Radical shake-ups at “high-achieving” schools are less common\u003c/a> -- it’s hard to see the need for change when test scores are high and kids are getting into prestigious colleges. But disengaged and bored students are found even at successful schools; kids are just more adept at jumping through the requisite hoops to achieve what they've been told will lead to a good life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TRYING SOMETHING NEW\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Greenwich High School in Connecticut is one such high-performing school. It is located in an affluent area with 14 percent of its students eligible for free and reduced price lunch. It's also a big school with an emphasis on testing and Advanced Placement courses.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">'There's got to be something else to make this stuff stick a little better.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>But even with its apparent success, Greenwich headmaster Chris Winters quietly tapped a select group of teachers to explore what a radically different kind of public high school experience might look like. After dreaming together a few times a month over the course of a year, the school received a grant from a local non-profit, Greenwich Alliance, so that \u003ca href=\"http://ghsinnovationlab.com/our-team/\" target=\"_blank\">five teachers could plan and recruit\u003c/a> for their big experiment -- what they’re calling \u003ca href=\"http://ghsinnovationlab.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Innovation Lab\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was clear from the beginning that it wasn't going to be a top-down initiative,” said Brian Walach, a math teacher and member of the Innovation Lab teaching team. The headmaster was clear that the program had to fit within the constraints of the public school system, but otherwise he gave the teaching team freedom to come up with a program that would excite students to learn on their own, connect subject areas and dive deeply into individual passions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>WHAT WILL IT LOOK LIKE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Freshmen at Greenwich are currently applying for 90 spots in the Innovation Lab where they will take all their math, English, social studies and science classes for the next three years (although students can opt out of the program if they don't like it). Students will study big questions that tie the subjects together -- things like climate change or logic as expressed through different disciplines.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Each quarter will follow a seminar cycle where big questions are discussed, researched, deepened and connected to the real-world. That could mean interdisciplinary discussions, modules focused on developing subject-specific skills or studio time to dig into a particularly interesting aspect that can be brought back to the group.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can check off a ton of boxes on the stuff we need to cover while still making it interesting and connecting the dots between things,” Walach said. In this way, the Innovation Lab teachers expect to teach all the standards public school students are supposed to learn, but without following a pacing guide or textbook.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The seminar cycle will take four weeks of the quarter and is followed by an immersion week where students get to drill down on an aspect of the seminar that particularly interests them, reaching out to experts in the field or going out to see the ideas work. “We’re looking at immersion week as a moment when students can step back from what school feels like and connect with what this looks like in the real-world and get immersed in that experience,” Walach said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After five weeks of seminar and immersion, students will get the chance to design a solution for a real-world problem they’ve identified through research and study. They’ll work independently, with support from teachers, to design and build a product that meets the need they’ve identified. At the end each will present his or her project to the group in a showcase of student-designed and built products.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Climate change will be a big part of first quarter sophomore year. Together students and teachers will examine questions like: how do mathematicians and scientists differ in how they make claims about the empirical evidence of climate change. Students will analyze climate science data, which Walach says involves a lot of Algebra II concepts, and discuss how climate deniers construct their arguments. In social studies, they’ll look at how policy arguments are formulated, how that logic works in comparison to something like a mathematical proof, and how logical frameworks from various disciplines are different from one another.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39105\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/01/Greenwich-cycle.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-39105\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/01/Greenwich-cycle-300x329.jpg\" alt=\"An Innovation Lab graph showing ho seminars, design and immersion in the real world work together.\" width=\"300\" height=\"329\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An Innovation Lab graph showing ho seminars, design and immersion in the real world work together.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>In English, they may look at how satire can influence both personal and political decision making. They might examine Mark Twain’s satire as an example, analyzing his critiques for facts and perception. And rather than taking a test to demonstrate understanding, the teaching team will be looking at alternate forms of applied assessment. For example, students might write and produce a satire of climate change deniers in the spirit of The Daily Show.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>THE MOTIVATION\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s got to be something else to make this stuff stick a little better,” Walach said. “If my goal is to have my students pass my final at the end of the year, then maybe I should keep teaching math as we are right now. But if we want students to be able to apply math to the real world, it’s not working.” He’s tired of watching students grind through school just because they know they have to show colleges a committed, consistent record.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I want to give them an experience where they get to learn something they’re actually passionate about, that’s what school’s about,” Walach said. And there were a lot of things about traditional teaching that annoyed him, like students’ obsession with grades. Math is often considered to be an outlier, not part of interdisciplinary approaches because of the belief that its linear and certain concepts must be taught before others can be broached. Walach no longer believes that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Now that I’ve actually done it, I don’t think it’s really that hard after you get some practice talking about subjects in more than one way,” Walach said. “I’m excited to talk about math differently.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">'I feel really motivated when I learn something I enjoy learning.'\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Similar motivations drove the other teachers involved in Innovation lab. Science teacher Dr. Sarah Golin has experience as a researcher. She’s long wanted to teach science like she learned it in graduate school, when she was the most engaged with her work. “I think for science teachers to shift into project-based learning, they need to have that experience themselves.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For his part, social studies teacher Michael Belanger found himself pushing his students to ask deeper questions and reveling in the discussions that came from them. “The time I enjoy teaching most is when I’m helping kids discover things on their own or working in small groups,” Belanger said. “So when I heard about Innovation Lab, that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do in my classes, except we’ll be doing it in a more interdisciplinary way.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The five teachers who’ve worked to make Innovation Lab a reality know that the 90 kids who may take part are only a small portion of the more than 2,500 students at the school. But they hope to provide an example of rigorous, connected learning that doesn’t rely on traditional means like AP classes to give students interesting and challenging ways to learn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>CAN THIS BE DONE ELSEWHERE?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Innovation Lab has several things working in its favor. The school is located in an affluent district and has more access to resources than many of the nation's poorest schools. The headmaster supports the effort and actively sought funding to free up some of his most creative teachers to make an idea a reality. And the team of teachers have been extraordinarily committed to creating a new reality at their school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_39109\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/01/Greenwich-chart.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-39109\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2015/01/Greenwich-chart-300x347.jpg\" alt=\"The Innovation Lab team has worked hard to explain to prospective participants how the program fits in with the rest of school.\" width=\"300\" height=\"347\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Innovation Lab team has worked hard to explain to prospective participants how the program fits in with the rest of school.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Despite these advantages, the teaching team is adamant that this idea is replicable in public schools elsewhere if leaders identify likely teachers, give them time to dream and plan, and make sure the program is teacher-driven. They’re clear that every school has its own culture and needs that will dictate what a new program looks like.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Can Project-Based Learning Close Gaps in Science Education? ",
"title": "Can Project-Based Learning Close Gaps in Science Education? ",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/Stockbyte.png\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/Stockbyte-640x360.png\" alt=\"Stockbyte\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-37926\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Putting kids to work on meaningful projects can transform classrooms into beehives of inquiry and discovery, but relatively few rigorous studies have examined how well this teaching method actually works. An \u003ca href=\"http://www.sri.com/blog/how-curriculum-materials-make-difference-next-generation-science-learning\">encouraging new report \u003c/a>describes preliminary, first-year outcomes from a study of 3,000 middle school students that shows kids can, in fact, learn more in science classrooms that adopt a well-designed, project-focused curriculum. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Students participate in the same basic ways that scientists would, with activities organized by important “driving questions” that are relevant in science but also meaningful for kids.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>When researchers analyzed test scores from those classrooms by students’ gender and ethnicity, there were no differences in learning performance. That’s a preliminary indication that high-quality project-based curricula might be able to help narrow the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/01/dismal-science-scores-in-u-s-public-schools/\">science education achievement gap\u003c/a> in children from low-income backgrounds or other groups that are underrepresented in STEM fields. The project-based science lessons “seem to work for all kinds of kids,” said report co-author Christopher Harris, a senior researcher at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. “Girls and boys learned at similar rates in this study.” He believes that the personal engagement in meaningful classroom activities that teachers can create through such curriculum materials “makes a difference.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How well the benefits hold up or grow in the second year of implementation remains to be seen. But the researchers see \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/moving-towards-inquiry-how-to-reinvent-project-based-learning/\">project-based inquiry learning\u003c/a> as a promising strategy for helping school systems move toward \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/new-science-standards-aim-to-relate-concepts-to-students-lives/\" target=\"_blank\">new U.S. science education standards\u003c/a> that were released last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Access to good science curriculum materials is a “vexing issue,” Harris said. In urban public schools, science textbooks are often 10 years old and the standard curricula “provide very few opportunities for students to really engage in the science, beyond emphasizing the scientific canon or the knowledge that's been developed over time,” he said. “They typically don't have a hands-on approach.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To move beyond the rote memorization of disconnected science facts that traditional instruction tends to emphasize, in 2011 the U.S. National Research Council laid out a \u003ca href=\"http://sites.nationalacademies.org/dbasse/bose/framework_k12_science/index.htm\">new framework for revamping K-12 science education\u003c/a>. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards\">Next Generation Science Standards\u003c/a> embody that framework and aim to teach kids some of the core thought processes and practices that scientists and engineers use to investigate natural phenomena and solve problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meeting those new standards will likely require a considerable shift in how schools teach science. Project-based inquiry learning programs seem well suited to be part of the solution: They get students to participate in educational projects in the same basic ways that scientists would, with activities organized by important “driving questions” that are relevant in science but also meaningful for kids, Harris said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Putting Project-Based Science Classes to the Test\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One such curriculum for grades 6-8 is Project-Based Inquiry Science (PBIS). Originally developed in the ‘90s at several universities with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), it incorporated the latest research knowledge on how students learn and how teachers can best teach them. An education publishing company named It's About Time brought \u003ca href=\"http://www.iat.com/courses/middle-school-science/project-based-inquiry-science/?type=introduction\">the curriculum\u003c/a> to the commercial market. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Currently, PBIS is one of the few curricula available that are fully aligned with the new science standards, and its structured activities emphasize core practices such as carrying out investigations, constructing science explanations and developing and using models. For instance, one physics project poses the driving question, “Why should I wear a helmet when I ride my bike?” – an inquiry that’s compelling because it connects directly to kids’ everyday lives, Harris said. To answer it, students work on a series of activities leading them to explore related questions that build their knowledge of the principles of force, motion, acceleration and gravity, so that they can grasp how a helmet would protect their heads from the impact of a potential collision. With guidance from their teacher, “they're conducting investigations, but there's also supports for kids to collect data, organize it, analyze it, share it, debate it, argue about it”—similar to how real-life scientists work, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an SRI research effort funded with a $5 million NSF grant, Harris recently conducted a randomized controlled trial of whether the PBIS materials are effective. Project collaborators included William Penuel of the University of Colorado and Joseph Krajcik, a Michigan State University professor who helped develop the new U.S. science standards as well as the original PBIS curriculum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"2MxgnbzA3Fn23YAcONABzumhuxn6n168\"]\u003cbr>\nThe experiment took place in sixth-grade science classes at 42 middle schools in a large, ethnically diverse urban public school district during the 2012-2014 academic years. About 55 percent of the pupils were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. Half of those schools adopted PBIS curriculum units for physical science and earth science, with their teachers going through professional development training (provided by It’s About Time) in project-based teaching and the next-generation science standards. The rest of the schools taught science the traditional way, but their instructors also received training in the new standards. Almost 100 teachers and more than 3,000 students participated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On average, kids in the project-based physical science classes performed roughly 8 percent better on an end-of-unit learning assessment than the kids in traditional classes. (Because the course content was new, the researchers also had to create entirely new assessment tests, which required a lot more demonstration of critical thinking skills than standard multiple-choice science tests.) That’s an improvement that would lift a student who scored in the 50th percentile on the test to the 58th percentile – a gain that “is actually really good for an education intervention,” Harris said. Pupils in the PBIS earth science classes showed a similar trend toward stronger scores, but that increase wasn’t statistically significant. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It takes at least two years for teachers to become comfortable with new curriculum materials,” Harris noted. Nonetheless, instructors in year one of the trial were able to use the project-based materials “relatively effectively to support the kind of science learning called for in the new standards. We are very interested to see what the analysis will show for year two.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barriers Ahead – and the Potential Payoff \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research team is now analyzing data from year two and will evaluate how well teachers implemented the project-based curriculum. While the approach clearly \u003ca href=\"http://www.iat.com/testimonials/30/\">engages students \u003c/a>more, potential barriers to its wide adoption include the fact that it is resource intensive, Harris said. School districts have to buy not just the book and teacher’s guide but also the materials for classroom activities. Each PBIS unit costs roughly $23 per student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And teachers need substantial training, including support throughout the school year, to learn how to coordinate kids to collaborate well on projects, and to ensure that important scientific concepts bubble up and get discussed. So project-based learning is generally a huge investment for school districts and more work for the teachers, but many of them “find that the hard work pays off,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harris hopes to see more project-based science curricula coming out that are keyed to the new standards and grounded in research on learning. Such materials are badly needed in elementary schools, because too many children don’t get exposed to good science instruction on a consistent basis until middle school, he said. Catching kids earlier to help them see the big picture of what science is about could spark their excitement – and perhaps inspire new generations of young scientists from diverse backgrounds that STEM disciplines are greatly in want of.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/Stockbyte.png\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/Stockbyte-640x360.png\" alt=\"Stockbyte\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-37926\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Putting kids to work on meaningful projects can transform classrooms into beehives of inquiry and discovery, but relatively few rigorous studies have examined how well this teaching method actually works. An \u003ca href=\"http://www.sri.com/blog/how-curriculum-materials-make-difference-next-generation-science-learning\">encouraging new report \u003c/a>describes preliminary, first-year outcomes from a study of 3,000 middle school students that shows kids can, in fact, learn more in science classrooms that adopt a well-designed, project-focused curriculum. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Students participate in the same basic ways that scientists would, with activities organized by important “driving questions” that are relevant in science but also meaningful for kids.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>When researchers analyzed test scores from those classrooms by students’ gender and ethnicity, there were no differences in learning performance. That’s a preliminary indication that high-quality project-based curricula might be able to help narrow the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/01/dismal-science-scores-in-u-s-public-schools/\">science education achievement gap\u003c/a> in children from low-income backgrounds or other groups that are underrepresented in STEM fields. The project-based science lessons “seem to work for all kinds of kids,” said report co-author Christopher Harris, a senior researcher at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. “Girls and boys learned at similar rates in this study.” He believes that the personal engagement in meaningful classroom activities that teachers can create through such curriculum materials “makes a difference.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How well the benefits hold up or grow in the second year of implementation remains to be seen. But the researchers see \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/moving-towards-inquiry-how-to-reinvent-project-based-learning/\">project-based inquiry learning\u003c/a> as a promising strategy for helping school systems move toward \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/new-science-standards-aim-to-relate-concepts-to-students-lives/\" target=\"_blank\">new U.S. science education standards\u003c/a> that were released last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Access to good science curriculum materials is a “vexing issue,” Harris said. In urban public schools, science textbooks are often 10 years old and the standard curricula “provide very few opportunities for students to really engage in the science, beyond emphasizing the scientific canon or the knowledge that's been developed over time,” he said. “They typically don't have a hands-on approach.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To move beyond the rote memorization of disconnected science facts that traditional instruction tends to emphasize, in 2011 the U.S. National Research Council laid out a \u003ca href=\"http://sites.nationalacademies.org/dbasse/bose/framework_k12_science/index.htm\">new framework for revamping K-12 science education\u003c/a>. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards\">Next Generation Science Standards\u003c/a> embody that framework and aim to teach kids some of the core thought processes and practices that scientists and engineers use to investigate natural phenomena and solve problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meeting those new standards will likely require a considerable shift in how schools teach science. Project-based inquiry learning programs seem well suited to be part of the solution: They get students to participate in educational projects in the same basic ways that scientists would, with activities organized by important “driving questions” that are relevant in science but also meaningful for kids, Harris said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Putting Project-Based Science Classes to the Test\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One such curriculum for grades 6-8 is Project-Based Inquiry Science (PBIS). Originally developed in the ‘90s at several universities with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), it incorporated the latest research knowledge on how students learn and how teachers can best teach them. An education publishing company named It's About Time brought \u003ca href=\"http://www.iat.com/courses/middle-school-science/project-based-inquiry-science/?type=introduction\">the curriculum\u003c/a> to the commercial market. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Currently, PBIS is one of the few curricula available that are fully aligned with the new science standards, and its structured activities emphasize core practices such as carrying out investigations, constructing science explanations and developing and using models. For instance, one physics project poses the driving question, “Why should I wear a helmet when I ride my bike?” – an inquiry that’s compelling because it connects directly to kids’ everyday lives, Harris said. To answer it, students work on a series of activities leading them to explore related questions that build their knowledge of the principles of force, motion, acceleration and gravity, so that they can grasp how a helmet would protect their heads from the impact of a potential collision. With guidance from their teacher, “they're conducting investigations, but there's also supports for kids to collect data, organize it, analyze it, share it, debate it, argue about it”—similar to how real-life scientists work, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an SRI research effort funded with a $5 million NSF grant, Harris recently conducted a randomized controlled trial of whether the PBIS materials are effective. Project collaborators included William Penuel of the University of Colorado and Joseph Krajcik, a Michigan State University professor who helped develop the new U.S. science standards as well as the original PBIS curriculum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"2MxgnbzA3Fn23YAcONABzumhuxn6n168\"]\u003cbr>\nThe experiment took place in sixth-grade science classes at 42 middle schools in a large, ethnically diverse urban public school district during the 2012-2014 academic years. About 55 percent of the pupils were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. Half of those schools adopted PBIS curriculum units for physical science and earth science, with their teachers going through professional development training (provided by It’s About Time) in project-based teaching and the next-generation science standards. The rest of the schools taught science the traditional way, but their instructors also received training in the new standards. Almost 100 teachers and more than 3,000 students participated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On average, kids in the project-based physical science classes performed roughly 8 percent better on an end-of-unit learning assessment than the kids in traditional classes. (Because the course content was new, the researchers also had to create entirely new assessment tests, which required a lot more demonstration of critical thinking skills than standard multiple-choice science tests.) That’s an improvement that would lift a student who scored in the 50th percentile on the test to the 58th percentile – a gain that “is actually really good for an education intervention,” Harris said. Pupils in the PBIS earth science classes showed a similar trend toward stronger scores, but that increase wasn’t statistically significant. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It takes at least two years for teachers to become comfortable with new curriculum materials,” Harris noted. Nonetheless, instructors in year one of the trial were able to use the project-based materials “relatively effectively to support the kind of science learning called for in the new standards. We are very interested to see what the analysis will show for year two.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barriers Ahead – and the Potential Payoff \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research team is now analyzing data from year two and will evaluate how well teachers implemented the project-based curriculum. While the approach clearly \u003ca href=\"http://www.iat.com/testimonials/30/\">engages students \u003c/a>more, potential barriers to its wide adoption include the fact that it is resource intensive, Harris said. School districts have to buy not just the book and teacher’s guide but also the materials for classroom activities. Each PBIS unit costs roughly $23 per student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And teachers need substantial training, including support throughout the school year, to learn how to coordinate kids to collaborate well on projects, and to ensure that important scientific concepts bubble up and get discussed. So project-based learning is generally a huge investment for school districts and more work for the teachers, but many of them “find that the hard work pays off,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harris hopes to see more project-based science curricula coming out that are keyed to the new standards and grounded in research on learning. Such materials are badly needed in elementary schools, because too many children don’t get exposed to good science instruction on a consistent basis until middle school, he said. Catching kids earlier to help them see the big picture of what science is about could spark their excitement – and perhaps inspire new generations of young scientists from diverse backgrounds that STEM disciplines are greatly in want of.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"headTitle": "The MindShift Guide to Digital Games and Learning | MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36118\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-36118\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/Screen-Shot-2014-06-06-at-9.30.59-AM-e1402072334517.png\" alt=\"Gamestar Mechanic\" width=\"640\" height=\"339\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/Screen-Shot-2014-06-06-at-9.30.59-AM-e1402072334517.png 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/Screen-Shot-2014-06-06-at-9.30.59-AM-e1402072334517-400x212.png 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/Screen-Shot-2014-06-06-at-9.30.59-AM-e1402072334517-320x170.png 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gamestar Mechanic\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part 6 of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">As game-based learning increases in popularity, it's easy to get pigeon-holed into one particular way of thinking about it or one way of employing it. This is true regardless of how teachers feel about gaming in the classroom, whether they’re for or against it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One common objection to game-based learning is that students will sit in front of screens being taught \u003ci>at. \u003c/i>Sure, games are interactive, but on some level, don’t they still just replace the sage on the stage with the sage on the screen? Does a joystick really change the nature of pedagogy?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In previous posts in this series, I’ve argued that because games involve systems thinking, they \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-games-based-learning-teaches-problem-solving-in-context/\" target=\"_blank\">contextualize learning\u003c/a>. Game-based learning could bring us a step closer to John Dewey’s call for “learning by doing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>“\u003c/b>Games are just simulators with an internal incentive structure (often dopamine based). That means they tap into the way humans, and all living creatures, are hard-wired to learn: \u003ci>by doing,\u003c/i>” says Keith Devlin, author of \u003ci>\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Education-New-Era-Learning/dp/1568814313\" target=\"_blank\">Mathematics Education For A New Era: Video Games As A Medium For Learning.\u003c/a> \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, virtual simulations of hands-on experience are not the same as tangibly engaging with the world. Simulating doing is, by definition, not the real thing. Plus, some of game-based learning’s strengths can also be seen as weaknesses. Games provide sequenced instruction blended with practice, feedback, and assessment. But even adaptive games have a finite number of sequential variations. Structures, and therefore, frameworks and perspectives, all remain fixed in a game. Certainly it is part of an educator’s job to frame content, but we don’t want to do it in a way that prevents students from figuring out their own way to make meaning out of the material. In order to model a respect for diverse perspectives, we need to employ a variety of teaching methods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fortunately, few people are calling for games to replace school as we know it. Kids shouldn’t sit in front of screens all day. Games are just one of the many tools that teachers can use in the classroom. In addition, there is more than one way to teach using games. It's not just about playing the games, it's also about \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/three-awesome-apps-that-help-kids-make-games/\" target=\"_blank\">making them\u003c/a>. Game making is one way to create a space where students are empowered to freely experiment with their own way of framing ideas and choosing perspectives. In this way, game making is tantamount to project-based learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as there are many apps and platforms designed to teach kids coding, there are also many apps and platforms that make it easy for kids to design their own games. \u003ca href=\"https://gamestarmechanic.com/\">Gamestar Mechanic\u003c/a> is one of the better examples.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Created by \u003ca href=\"http://elinemedia.com/\">E-Line Media\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.instituteofplay.org/\">Institute of Play\u003c/a>, with initial funding from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.macfound.org/\">MacArthur Foundation\u003c/a>, Gamestar Mechanic is currently used in more than 7,000 schools, with over 600,000 youth-created games published and played over 20 million times in 100+ countries. It was created, the company states, “with the understanding that game design is an activity that allows learners to build technical, technological, artistic, cognitive, social, and linguistic skills suitable for our current and future world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gamestar Mechanic is a web-based software platform with a drag and drop interface that makes it simple for kids to make their own games. Successfully manipulating Gamestar Mechanic requires that students learn pretty sophisticated “systems thinking,” or systems-based problem solving. “Game mechanics” learn to adjust settings and manipulate the relationship between components within a particular framework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-35200 alignright\" style=\"border: 0\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x140.png\" alt=\"MindShiftGames\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brian Alspach, Executive Vice President at E-Line Media, explains that “a game is a system designed to create a fun, challenging experience for the player. Within the systems they design, kids get to set how things work, and their rules can be very different from the real world. Kids have to understand how all the pieces of the system they design will fit together. This system based thinking -- which can let you create a really fun, well-designed and unique game -- is also vital in understanding how systems in the real world work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just fiddling with Gamestar Mechanic, or some other game design platform is a great way to get students thinking about how separate components relate to one another within a fixed system. On a general level, it might serve as a way to convey the nature of bio-systems or economic systems. By constructing their own games, students get a tangible project-based introduction to the big abstract concept of systems thinking. But there’s no reason to be so philosophical. It can also be concrete. Teachers have also created \u003ca href=\"https://gamestarmechanic.com/teachers/sample_lesson_petty\">game-making exercises\u003c/a> that “provide reinforcement and review of concepts related to ratios, proportions and percents.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, game design \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2013/02/18/how-game-based-learning-can-save-the-humanities/\">is one way\u003c/a> that the arts and humanities can benefit from game-based learning. In a world of non-linear networked communication, modes of self-expression take on new forms. The personal essay, the autobiography, and the self-portrait are no longer sufficient by themselves. Intelligent educational models need to consider how to provide meaningful creative and interpretive skills that embrace interactive social technologies. Forward thinking teachers in so-called “soft” subjects might begin to see video games as a new narrative genre. Perhaps we can reimagine some of our creative writing assignments so that students design games, exploring nonlinear narrative conventions in addition to linear ones. Both are forms of self-expression.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://scratch.mit.edu/\">Scratch\u003c/a>, from MIT media lab, is another simple platform that allows students to build their own “interactive stories, games, and animations.” Based on basic coding, or algorithmic thinking, “Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century.” Scratch emphasizes the way coding can break down the boundary between STEM and ELA education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"78ed92004d34abc748ace644abc35c55\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although coding, as a skill, is usually classified as a STEM subject, game design shows kids that it is ultimately a semiotic system. That is, it is about language. Through design-thinking, coding allows folks to put together specific metaphors, signs, and systems in ways that enable the articulation of experiences through a shared system of meaning-making. Whether they belong to STEM or ELA, metaphors are all we have. We represent the universe through analogies that make social, technological, and medical accomplishments possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The great thing about any kind of project based learning -- whether it involves game design or not -- is that when students make meaning through creative articulations, they have to make active and intentional choices. Just as students need to choose paint colors or media in a fine arts class, they need to choose components in order to make a game. While these might seems like simple aesthetic choices, the right mentoring can show students how they are constructing their framework, how constructing a system is like constructing a viewpoint. When we challenge students to consider and explain why they make each choice, a sophisticated lesson in perspective is learned in a fun, engaging, hands-on way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve written a lot about \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/social-and-emotional-benefits-of-video-games-metacognition-and-relationships/\">metacognition\u003c/a> in this series, emphasizing the importance of teaching kids to think about their own thinking. With game design students take metacognition to the next level, learning that ideas are \u003ci>constructed\u003c/i>. They understand that knowledge is always framed from a particular perspective, with a particular kind of intention. The benefits of this kind of reflexive consideration are intellectual, social, and emotional.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Intellectually, students learn that all information is presented in \u003ci>some\u003c/i> way -- a lesson in methodology and epistemology. Socially, they become cognizant of the ways in which others construct knowledge -- a lesson in tolerance and empathy. Emotionally, they understand that feelings are part of a complex meaning system within which individuals are empowered to make their own decisions -- they have emotions rather than emotions having them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Imagine a classroom where you swap back and forth between books, essays, lectures, and games. Imagine if your students sometimes demonstrated understanding and retention by expressing themselves using game design platforms. Students might even begin to design their own learning games, constructing game-based curriculum for other students. Every teacher knows that the best way to learn is to teach. If an individual can create a game that delivers the content, you can be pretty sure that he or she understands it in a comprehensive way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a> is made possible through the generous support of the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/math-science-history-games-break-boundaries-between-subjects-interdisciplinary-learning/www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Joan Ganz Cooney Center\u003c/a> and is a project of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/initiative/games-and-learning-publishing-council-analyzing-a-rising-sector/\" target=\"_blank\">Games and Learning Publishing Council\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36118\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-36118\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/Screen-Shot-2014-06-06-at-9.30.59-AM-e1402072334517.png\" alt=\"Gamestar Mechanic\" width=\"640\" height=\"339\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/Screen-Shot-2014-06-06-at-9.30.59-AM-e1402072334517.png 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/Screen-Shot-2014-06-06-at-9.30.59-AM-e1402072334517-400x212.png 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/Screen-Shot-2014-06-06-at-9.30.59-AM-e1402072334517-320x170.png 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Gamestar Mechanic\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Part 6 of \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift’s Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">As game-based learning increases in popularity, it's easy to get pigeon-holed into one particular way of thinking about it or one way of employing it. This is true regardless of how teachers feel about gaming in the classroom, whether they’re for or against it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One common objection to game-based learning is that students will sit in front of screens being taught \u003ci>at. \u003c/i>Sure, games are interactive, but on some level, don’t they still just replace the sage on the stage with the sage on the screen? Does a joystick really change the nature of pedagogy?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In previous posts in this series, I’ve argued that because games involve systems thinking, they \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-games-based-learning-teaches-problem-solving-in-context/\" target=\"_blank\">contextualize learning\u003c/a>. Game-based learning could bring us a step closer to John Dewey’s call for “learning by doing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>“\u003c/b>Games are just simulators with an internal incentive structure (often dopamine based). That means they tap into the way humans, and all living creatures, are hard-wired to learn: \u003ci>by doing,\u003c/i>” says Keith Devlin, author of \u003ci>\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Education-New-Era-Learning/dp/1568814313\" target=\"_blank\">Mathematics Education For A New Era: Video Games As A Medium For Learning.\u003c/a> \u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, virtual simulations of hands-on experience are not the same as tangibly engaging with the world. Simulating doing is, by definition, not the real thing. Plus, some of game-based learning’s strengths can also be seen as weaknesses. Games provide sequenced instruction blended with practice, feedback, and assessment. But even adaptive games have a finite number of sequential variations. Structures, and therefore, frameworks and perspectives, all remain fixed in a game. Certainly it is part of an educator’s job to frame content, but we don’t want to do it in a way that prevents students from figuring out their own way to make meaning out of the material. In order to model a respect for diverse perspectives, we need to employ a variety of teaching methods.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fortunately, few people are calling for games to replace school as we know it. Kids shouldn’t sit in front of screens all day. Games are just one of the many tools that teachers can use in the classroom. In addition, there is more than one way to teach using games. It's not just about playing the games, it's also about \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/06/three-awesome-apps-that-help-kids-make-games/\" target=\"_blank\">making them\u003c/a>. Game making is one way to create a space where students are empowered to freely experiment with their own way of framing ideas and choosing perspectives. In this way, game making is tantamount to project-based learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as there are many apps and platforms designed to teach kids coding, there are also many apps and platforms that make it easy for kids to design their own games. \u003ca href=\"https://gamestarmechanic.com/\">Gamestar Mechanic\u003c/a> is one of the better examples.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Created by \u003ca href=\"http://elinemedia.com/\">E-Line Media\u003c/a> and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.instituteofplay.org/\">Institute of Play\u003c/a>, with initial funding from the \u003ca href=\"http://www.macfound.org/\">MacArthur Foundation\u003c/a>, Gamestar Mechanic is currently used in more than 7,000 schools, with over 600,000 youth-created games published and played over 20 million times in 100+ countries. It was created, the company states, “with the understanding that game design is an activity that allows learners to build technical, technological, artistic, cognitive, social, and linguistic skills suitable for our current and future world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gamestar Mechanic is a web-based software platform with a drag and drop interface that makes it simple for kids to make their own games. Successfully manipulating Gamestar Mechanic requires that students learn pretty sophisticated “systems thinking,” or systems-based problem solving. “Game mechanics” learn to adjust settings and manipulate the relationship between components within a particular framework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cimg class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-35200 alignright\" style=\"border: 0\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/MindShiftGames-140x140.png\" alt=\"MindShiftGames\" width=\"140\" height=\"140\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brian Alspach, Executive Vice President at E-Line Media, explains that “a game is a system designed to create a fun, challenging experience for the player. Within the systems they design, kids get to set how things work, and their rules can be very different from the real world. Kids have to understand how all the pieces of the system they design will fit together. This system based thinking -- which can let you create a really fun, well-designed and unique game -- is also vital in understanding how systems in the real world work.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just fiddling with Gamestar Mechanic, or some other game design platform is a great way to get students thinking about how separate components relate to one another within a fixed system. On a general level, it might serve as a way to convey the nature of bio-systems or economic systems. By constructing their own games, students get a tangible project-based introduction to the big abstract concept of systems thinking. But there’s no reason to be so philosophical. It can also be concrete. Teachers have also created \u003ca href=\"https://gamestarmechanic.com/teachers/sample_lesson_petty\">game-making exercises\u003c/a> that “provide reinforcement and review of concepts related to ratios, proportions and percents.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Additionally, game design \u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2013/02/18/how-game-based-learning-can-save-the-humanities/\">is one way\u003c/a> that the arts and humanities can benefit from game-based learning. In a world of non-linear networked communication, modes of self-expression take on new forms. The personal essay, the autobiography, and the self-portrait are no longer sufficient by themselves. Intelligent educational models need to consider how to provide meaningful creative and interpretive skills that embrace interactive social technologies. Forward thinking teachers in so-called “soft” subjects might begin to see video games as a new narrative genre. Perhaps we can reimagine some of our creative writing assignments so that students design games, exploring nonlinear narrative conventions in addition to linear ones. Both are forms of self-expression.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://scratch.mit.edu/\">Scratch\u003c/a>, from MIT media lab, is another simple platform that allows students to build their own “interactive stories, games, and animations.” Based on basic coding, or algorithmic thinking, “Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century.” Scratch emphasizes the way coding can break down the boundary between STEM and ELA education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although coding, as a skill, is usually classified as a STEM subject, game design shows kids that it is ultimately a semiotic system. That is, it is about language. Through design-thinking, coding allows folks to put together specific metaphors, signs, and systems in ways that enable the articulation of experiences through a shared system of meaning-making. Whether they belong to STEM or ELA, metaphors are all we have. We represent the universe through analogies that make social, technological, and medical accomplishments possible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The great thing about any kind of project based learning -- whether it involves game design or not -- is that when students make meaning through creative articulations, they have to make active and intentional choices. Just as students need to choose paint colors or media in a fine arts class, they need to choose components in order to make a game. While these might seems like simple aesthetic choices, the right mentoring can show students how they are constructing their framework, how constructing a system is like constructing a viewpoint. When we challenge students to consider and explain why they make each choice, a sophisticated lesson in perspective is learned in a fun, engaging, hands-on way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve written a lot about \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/social-and-emotional-benefits-of-video-games-metacognition-and-relationships/\">metacognition\u003c/a> in this series, emphasizing the importance of teaching kids to think about their own thinking. With game design students take metacognition to the next level, learning that ideas are \u003ci>constructed\u003c/i>. They understand that knowledge is always framed from a particular perspective, with a particular kind of intention. The benefits of this kind of reflexive consideration are intellectual, social, and emotional.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Intellectually, students learn that all information is presented in \u003ci>some\u003c/i> way -- a lesson in methodology and epistemology. Socially, they become cognizant of the ways in which others construct knowledge -- a lesson in tolerance and empathy. Emotionally, they understand that feelings are part of a complex meaning system within which individuals are empowered to make their own decisions -- they have emotions rather than emotions having them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Imagine a classroom where you swap back and forth between books, essays, lectures, and games. Imagine if your students sometimes demonstrated understanding and retention by expressing themselves using game design platforms. Students might even begin to design their own learning games, constructing game-based curriculum for other students. Every teacher knows that the best way to learn is to teach. If an individual can create a game that delivers the content, you can be pretty sure that he or she understands it in a comprehensive way.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>The \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/series/guide-to-games-and-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">MindShift Guide to Games and Learning\u003c/a> is made possible through the generous support of the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/math-science-history-games-break-boundaries-between-subjects-interdisciplinary-learning/www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Joan Ganz Cooney Center\u003c/a> and is a project of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/initiative/games-and-learning-publishing-council-analyzing-a-rising-sector/\" target=\"_blank\">Games and Learning Publishing Council\u003c/a>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35941\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/going-to-college2.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-35941\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/going-to-college2.jpg\" alt=\"The walls of Envision Academy of Arts and Technology in Oakland are covered with messages about academic perseverance and celebrations of its many seniors headed to college next year. (Katrina Schwartz)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/going-to-college2.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/going-to-college2-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/going-to-college2-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The walls of Envision Academy of Arts and Technology in Oakland are covered with messages about academic perseverance and celebrations of its many seniors headed to college next year. (Katrina Schwartz)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Twelfth grader Stazanae Tidwell sits on a stool facing three teachers and two students, ready to present her thesis, the product of four years of hard work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She looks nervous, but confident as she begins her College Success Portfolio Defense at \u003ca href=\"http://envisionacademy.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Envision Academy\u003c/a> in Oakland, Calif. Tidwell will have to present three different projects she worked on during her senior year, laying out her thesis, providing evidence to support the thesis and connecting interdisciplinary ideas. She also has to show that she’s developed a personal philosophy of learning and that she can connect her academics to her personal life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tidwell's presentation represents Envision Academy's focus: to teach and measure skills that go beyond algebra and essay writing. In addition to taking the state assessments for the past 12 years, students have also been learning how to see themselves as scholars, so they can have the confidence to face challenges in college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.envisionschools.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Envision Schools\u003c/a> is a small public charter network in the San Francisco Bay Area whose mission is to prepare students to get into and graduate from college, and to do this, teachers focus on helping students develop what they call a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/02/how-do-we-create-rich-learning-opportunities-for-all-students/\" target=\"_blank\">“deeper learning” skill set\u003c/a>. Students have to master academic content and skills, collaborate effectively, think critically, reflect on how they learn, and understand how they can have an impact on their own success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We said if we are going to redesign high school so that kids go to and graduate from college, we’re going to have to teach and assess these outcomes,” sad Bob Lenz, co-founder of Envision Schools and Director of Innovation. The Portfolio Defense is the culminating assessment of these skills: four years of working to learn specific class content, and a steady progression towards proficiency in the deeper learning outcomes. “The portfolio defense is a really transformational rite of passage,” Lenz said. “Our young people are getting validated by the adults in their community that they are ready for the next step in their life and that’s a really powerful experience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"People start to expect you to be a failure or to be nothing. And I know that that’s not at all what I am. I know that I want to go far and I want to do a lot and I’m very capable of achieving my goals. It’s just time I show everyone that I can do it.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Getting to the point where students can defend what they’ve learned and demonstrate that deeper learning skills takes a lot of hard work. Most ninth-graders at Envision Academy in Oakland come in reading at a sixth-grade level. All students have taken algebra, a requirement at public middle schools in Oakland, but only 14 percent are proficient at it when they start their freshmen year. There’s a lot of remediation so that students graduate secure in the knowledge that they can produce college-level work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A RITE OF PASSAGE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Demonstrating what they think they’ve learned is a powerful experience for students. They're continually refining their projects to make sure they're meeting all the requirements stated on the rubric. But even once the project is deemed proficient, the student could fail his or her defense. It’s a high stakes moment where students put their best foot forward, answering questions and receiving feedback, both positive and negative from their teachers and peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If they fail, they have to go back and revise their presentations. “They learn that if they work really hard and they fail and they continue to work hard, with support they will eventually pass,” Lenz said. “And we think that is one of the biggest lessons they take away from this because this is what life is full of. And especially for low-income kids of color who go into college, they’re going to face adversity, and we want them prepared to fail and pick up and work hard and persist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>WHAT DO STUDENTS THINK?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35906\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/Stazanae.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-35906\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/Stazanae-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"Stazanae Tidwell and her mother beam their happiness after Tidwell passed her Senior Success Portfolio Defense with distinction. (Katrina Schwartz/KQED)\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stazanae Tidwell and her mother beam their happiness after Tidwell passed her Senior Success Portfolio Defense with distinction. (Katrina Schwartz)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“By doing these presentations I actually mastered the information,” said senior Stazanae Tidwell. “I feel like it pays off in the end because we’ll go into college with the skills we need.” Tidwell also readily admits that she failed many times on the path to her eventual success, passing her defense on the first try, with distinction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During her defense, Tidwell discussed two literary texts from a psychoanalytical perspective and related them back to her own experience growing up low-income in Oakland. She discussed her father’s violent death on the streets, and that while the circumstances around his death were complicated, she ultimately attributes it to his lack of planning for a life after high school. She showed her defense panel the academic growth she has shown in high school by comparing her sophomore grades -- where she was failing every course -- to her senior year where she made the honor roll both semesters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just feel like because I messed up so much it gets tiring,” Tidwell said. “People start to expect you to be a failure or to be nothing. And I know that that’s not at all what I am. I know that I want to go far and I want to do a lot and I’m very capable of achieving my goals. It’s just time I show everyone that I can do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her defense, Tidwell explained her philosophy of education as falling until one learns how and where to stand. Her life story clearly reflects that belief in redemption, something the school allowed her to achieve through its philosophy. Tidwell plans to attend a two-year college next year and hopes to transfer to Howard University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ASSESSING DEEPER LEARNING\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All teachers in the school have to assess students’ portfolio defenses, both for sophomores and for seniors. To prepare for that responsibility teachers go through rigorous training so they understand what the subject-area teacher taught and what qualities make it proficient. Teachers are also working to calibrate their interpretations of different presentations so that one person isn’t grading much more strictly or laxly than others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The powerful thing that comes out of that is that all the teachers and the staff in the building have a common standard of high expectations for all kids,” Lenz said. When preparing to evaluate defenses, subject area teachers do a mock-defense of the projects they assigned students to demonstrate to their peer graders what was taught, what a proficient presentation looks like, and to familiarize other subject area teachers with the content.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"Low-income kids of color who go into college are going to face adversity, and we want them prepared to fail and pick up and work hard and persist.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The other teachers then practice scoring presentations against the rubric and discussing what qualities made it proficient or not. If their standards are too high or too low they have to recalibrate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The lens that they’re really looking towards is the deeper learning outcomes,” Lenz said. Students have already worked hard to make the projects they are presenting proficient in the eyes of their subject area teacher. The defense is more about the ability to communicate their ideas, think on their feet when they are asked questions and be able to articulate the connections between things they’ve learned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>DEVELOPING ACADEMIC IDENTITIES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When ninth-graders come into Envision Academy, teachers first work to build up their engagement with school, which Lenz said happens fairly quickly. The bigger challenge is to keep them engaged by providing supports that help them be successful. “They’ve had a repeated pattern of failure,” Lenz said. “What we’re trying to do is break that pattern and help them build a growth mindset so they see that their hard work will pay off to increase learning and increase success.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35903\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/evidence.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-35903\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/evidence-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"A student project depicting themes in Alice Walker's novel "The Flowers" hangs on a classrom wall. (Katrina Schwartz/KQED)\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A student project depicting themes in Alice Walker's short story \"The Flowers\" hangs on a classroom wall. (Katrina Schwartz)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The school has five socio-emotional counselors to support students who have experienced trauma. They run a special program for African American boys to talk about their identity as scholars -- a direct attempt to turn around a persistent \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/too-important-to-fail/fact-sheet-outcomes-for-young-black-men/\" target=\"_blank\">national trend of failing African American boys\u003c/a>. Everyone in the school participates in a Silent Sustained Reading program several times a week and there's lots of time to get extra help from teachers. Lenz says if they can keep them engaged through ninth grade, they build on that success in 10th grade, helping them to form a more positive academic identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make sure they're on track, sophomores have to defend their first two years of learning, proving they're ready to move into the upper division. If sophomores can’t demonstrate proficiency on all parts of the sophomore rubric they have to keep working on it and defend again until they pass. Students at the school understand that learning is a process and that if they don’t understand the material or perform the skills well the first time they can continue trying. What matters is that they eventually demonstrate they can produce and discuss work that would be accepted in a college-level class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This experience is what I think helps our students develop that academic resilience and grit that helps them persist through college,” said Kirsten Grimm, Principal of Envision Academy of Arts and Technology in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BUILDING PROFICIENCY THROUGH PROJECTS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A big part of helping students become proficient in the content and skills they need to graduate and succeed after school is to make a clear rubric for every project that defines the skills students will be expected to demonstrate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35905\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/Defense-prep.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-35905\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/Defense-prep-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"An Envision Academy teacher works with a student as he prepares his senior defense. (Katrina Schwartz/KQED)\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An Envision Academy teacher works with a student as he prepares his senior defense. (Katrina Schwartz)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We can see what task a student is going to be asked to perform in order to demonstrate proficiency and we can work towards that,” said John Kittredge, a digital literacy and expression teacher at Envision Academy. In his class, which involves both practical computing skills and creative digital expression, Kittredge usually assigns a project that focuses on a specific technical skill first. For example, students were asked to make a “How-To” video to practice videography skills, but the video could explain something as simple as how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That way students can become comfortable with the technique before worrying about content.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Then they take that technique and they apply it to something where the content is more creative or specifically driven by another class,” Kittredge said. “They have the opportunity to learn the skill and then apply it.” Teachers are preparing their students step-by-step for bigger projects that will include all the skills they will have to demonstrate they learned for that class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35941\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/going-to-college2.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-35941\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/going-to-college2.jpg\" alt=\"The walls of Envision Academy of Arts and Technology in Oakland are covered with messages about academic perseverance and celebrations of its many seniors headed to college next year. (Katrina Schwartz)\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/going-to-college2.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/going-to-college2-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/going-to-college2-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The walls of Envision Academy of Arts and Technology in Oakland are covered with messages about academic perseverance and celebrations of its many seniors headed to college next year. (Katrina Schwartz)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Twelfth grader Stazanae Tidwell sits on a stool facing three teachers and two students, ready to present her thesis, the product of four years of hard work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She looks nervous, but confident as she begins her College Success Portfolio Defense at \u003ca href=\"http://envisionacademy.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Envision Academy\u003c/a> in Oakland, Calif. Tidwell will have to present three different projects she worked on during her senior year, laying out her thesis, providing evidence to support the thesis and connecting interdisciplinary ideas. She also has to show that she’s developed a personal philosophy of learning and that she can connect her academics to her personal life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Tidwell's presentation represents Envision Academy's focus: to teach and measure skills that go beyond algebra and essay writing. In addition to taking the state assessments for the past 12 years, students have also been learning how to see themselves as scholars, so they can have the confidence to face challenges in college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.envisionschools.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Envision Schools\u003c/a> is a small public charter network in the San Francisco Bay Area whose mission is to prepare students to get into and graduate from college, and to do this, teachers focus on helping students develop what they call a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/02/how-do-we-create-rich-learning-opportunities-for-all-students/\" target=\"_blank\">“deeper learning” skill set\u003c/a>. Students have to master academic content and skills, collaborate effectively, think critically, reflect on how they learn, and understand how they can have an impact on their own success.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We said if we are going to redesign high school so that kids go to and graduate from college, we’re going to have to teach and assess these outcomes,” sad Bob Lenz, co-founder of Envision Schools and Director of Innovation. The Portfolio Defense is the culminating assessment of these skills: four years of working to learn specific class content, and a steady progression towards proficiency in the deeper learning outcomes. “The portfolio defense is a really transformational rite of passage,” Lenz said. “Our young people are getting validated by the adults in their community that they are ready for the next step in their life and that’s a really powerful experience.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"People start to expect you to be a failure or to be nothing. And I know that that’s not at all what I am. I know that I want to go far and I want to do a lot and I’m very capable of achieving my goals. It’s just time I show everyone that I can do it.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Getting to the point where students can defend what they’ve learned and demonstrate that deeper learning skills takes a lot of hard work. Most ninth-graders at Envision Academy in Oakland come in reading at a sixth-grade level. All students have taken algebra, a requirement at public middle schools in Oakland, but only 14 percent are proficient at it when they start their freshmen year. There’s a lot of remediation so that students graduate secure in the knowledge that they can produce college-level work.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A RITE OF PASSAGE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Demonstrating what they think they’ve learned is a powerful experience for students. They're continually refining their projects to make sure they're meeting all the requirements stated on the rubric. But even once the project is deemed proficient, the student could fail his or her defense. It’s a high stakes moment where students put their best foot forward, answering questions and receiving feedback, both positive and negative from their teachers and peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If they fail, they have to go back and revise their presentations. “They learn that if they work really hard and they fail and they continue to work hard, with support they will eventually pass,” Lenz said. “And we think that is one of the biggest lessons they take away from this because this is what life is full of. And especially for low-income kids of color who go into college, they’re going to face adversity, and we want them prepared to fail and pick up and work hard and persist.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>WHAT DO STUDENTS THINK?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35906\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/Stazanae.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-35906\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/Stazanae-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"Stazanae Tidwell and her mother beam their happiness after Tidwell passed her Senior Success Portfolio Defense with distinction. (Katrina Schwartz/KQED)\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stazanae Tidwell and her mother beam their happiness after Tidwell passed her Senior Success Portfolio Defense with distinction. (Katrina Schwartz)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“By doing these presentations I actually mastered the information,” said senior Stazanae Tidwell. “I feel like it pays off in the end because we’ll go into college with the skills we need.” Tidwell also readily admits that she failed many times on the path to her eventual success, passing her defense on the first try, with distinction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>During her defense, Tidwell discussed two literary texts from a psychoanalytical perspective and related them back to her own experience growing up low-income in Oakland. She discussed her father’s violent death on the streets, and that while the circumstances around his death were complicated, she ultimately attributes it to his lack of planning for a life after high school. She showed her defense panel the academic growth she has shown in high school by comparing her sophomore grades -- where she was failing every course -- to her senior year where she made the honor roll both semesters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just feel like because I messed up so much it gets tiring,” Tidwell said. “People start to expect you to be a failure or to be nothing. And I know that that’s not at all what I am. I know that I want to go far and I want to do a lot and I’m very capable of achieving my goals. It’s just time I show everyone that I can do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In her defense, Tidwell explained her philosophy of education as falling until one learns how and where to stand. Her life story clearly reflects that belief in redemption, something the school allowed her to achieve through its philosophy. Tidwell plans to attend a two-year college next year and hopes to transfer to Howard University.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ASSESSING DEEPER LEARNING\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All teachers in the school have to assess students’ portfolio defenses, both for sophomores and for seniors. To prepare for that responsibility teachers go through rigorous training so they understand what the subject-area teacher taught and what qualities make it proficient. Teachers are also working to calibrate their interpretations of different presentations so that one person isn’t grading much more strictly or laxly than others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The powerful thing that comes out of that is that all the teachers and the staff in the building have a common standard of high expectations for all kids,” Lenz said. When preparing to evaluate defenses, subject area teachers do a mock-defense of the projects they assigned students to demonstrate to their peer graders what was taught, what a proficient presentation looks like, and to familiarize other subject area teachers with the content.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"Low-income kids of color who go into college are going to face adversity, and we want them prepared to fail and pick up and work hard and persist.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>The other teachers then practice scoring presentations against the rubric and discussing what qualities made it proficient or not. If their standards are too high or too low they have to recalibrate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The lens that they’re really looking towards is the deeper learning outcomes,” Lenz said. Students have already worked hard to make the projects they are presenting proficient in the eyes of their subject area teacher. The defense is more about the ability to communicate their ideas, think on their feet when they are asked questions and be able to articulate the connections between things they’ve learned.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>DEVELOPING ACADEMIC IDENTITIES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When ninth-graders come into Envision Academy, teachers first work to build up their engagement with school, which Lenz said happens fairly quickly. The bigger challenge is to keep them engaged by providing supports that help them be successful. “They’ve had a repeated pattern of failure,” Lenz said. “What we’re trying to do is break that pattern and help them build a growth mindset so they see that their hard work will pay off to increase learning and increase success.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35903\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/evidence.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-35903\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/evidence-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"A student project depicting themes in Alice Walker's novel "The Flowers" hangs on a classrom wall. (Katrina Schwartz/KQED)\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A student project depicting themes in Alice Walker's short story \"The Flowers\" hangs on a classroom wall. (Katrina Schwartz)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The school has five socio-emotional counselors to support students who have experienced trauma. They run a special program for African American boys to talk about their identity as scholars -- a direct attempt to turn around a persistent \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/tsr/too-important-to-fail/fact-sheet-outcomes-for-young-black-men/\" target=\"_blank\">national trend of failing African American boys\u003c/a>. Everyone in the school participates in a Silent Sustained Reading program several times a week and there's lots of time to get extra help from teachers. Lenz says if they can keep them engaged through ninth grade, they build on that success in 10th grade, helping them to form a more positive academic identity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make sure they're on track, sophomores have to defend their first two years of learning, proving they're ready to move into the upper division. If sophomores can’t demonstrate proficiency on all parts of the sophomore rubric they have to keep working on it and defend again until they pass. Students at the school understand that learning is a process and that if they don’t understand the material or perform the skills well the first time they can continue trying. What matters is that they eventually demonstrate they can produce and discuss work that would be accepted in a college-level class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This experience is what I think helps our students develop that academic resilience and grit that helps them persist through college,” said Kirsten Grimm, Principal of Envision Academy of Arts and Technology in Oakland.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>BUILDING PROFICIENCY THROUGH PROJECTS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A big part of helping students become proficient in the content and skills they need to graduate and succeed after school is to make a clear rubric for every project that defines the skills students will be expected to demonstrate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35905\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/Defense-prep.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-35905\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/Defense-prep-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"An Envision Academy teacher works with a student as he prepares his senior defense. (Katrina Schwartz/KQED)\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An Envision Academy teacher works with a student as he prepares his senior defense. (Katrina Schwartz)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We can see what task a student is going to be asked to perform in order to demonstrate proficiency and we can work towards that,” said John Kittredge, a digital literacy and expression teacher at Envision Academy. In his class, which involves both practical computing skills and creative digital expression, Kittredge usually assigns a project that focuses on a specific technical skill first. For example, students were asked to make a “How-To” video to practice videography skills, but the video could explain something as simple as how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That way students can become comfortable with the technique before worrying about content.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Then they take that technique and they apply it to something where the content is more creative or specifically driven by another class,” Kittredge said. “They have the opportunity to learn the skill and then apply it.” Teachers are preparing their students step-by-step for bigger projects that will include all the skills they will have to demonstrate they learned for that class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35238\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-35238\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/space1-e1398279037576.jpg\" alt=\"space1\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/space1-e1398279037576.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/space1-e1398279037576-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/space1-e1398279037576-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Christina Farr\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">It took just a few weeks for a group of Boston-based teenagers to develop an affordable prosthetic hand for children. These teens took a brief hiatus from school to enroll in \u003ca href=\"https://cambridge.nuvustudio.com/discover\" target=\"_blank\">NuVu Studio\u003c/a>, a project-based learning program in Cambridge, Mass. that pairs students with real-world projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On their first day at NuVu, students were split into groups of 10, assigned a mentor (typically a doctoral student) and a theme, like “the future of global warming” or “balloon mapping.” In the most recent health-themed studio, one of these teams mocked up the prosthetic hand, after conducting interviews with patients, the families of amputees, physicians, and engineers in the Boston area. The students ultimately hacked MakerBot's original files to make their design on a 3D printer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NuVu is the brainchild of Saeed Arida, a former PhD student from MIT who believes that young people should be taught to solve real-world problems, like using new materials to design higher-quality prosthetics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Studios are not subjects in the traditional sense, as they involve finding a solution for a very real human problem,\" said Arida. \"What students do here is a very different kind of educational experience.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here's How NuVu describes the program:\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 30px\">NuVu is a full-time magnet innovation center for middle and high school students. NuVu’s pedagogy is based on the architectural Studio model and geared around multi-disciplinary, collaborative projects. We basically teach students how to navigate the messiness of the creative process, from inception to completion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u003cstrong>No Courses:\u003c/strong> Instead, we have studios. Around 12 kids work closely with their 2 coaches on solving big (and small) open-ended problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u003cstrong>No Subjects:\u003c/strong> Instead, everything is fused together. Students find themselves moving between a studio that requires them to design a telepresence robot to another that requires them to re-imagine Boston with a cable car system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u003cstrong>No Classrooms\u003c/strong>: Instead, we have an open space that changes all the time to adapt to the needs of every studio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u003cstrong>No One-Hour Schedule:\u003c/strong> Instead, students spend two weeks from 9-3 solving one problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u003cstrong>No Grades:\u003c/strong> Instead, we have portfolios that document students' design decisions and show their final products.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>But can anyone visualize this happening in today's public schools? Project-based learning programs like NuVu are not particularly common throughout the U.S., with notable exceptions like \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/02/how-do-we-create-rich-learning-opportunities-for-all-students/\" target=\"_blank\">High Tech High\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/05/what-it-takes-to-become-a-project-based-school/\" target=\"_blank\">New Tech Network\u003c/a>. Most K-12 classrooms in America are fairly new to project-based learning, or don’t offer it at all. Typically speaking, only the most elite schools in the wealthiest neighborhoods can afford to experiment with PBL.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NuVu got its start by partnering with Beaver County Day School in Brookline, Mass., an elite independent school attended by the sons and daughters of Harvard and MIT graduates, which is positioning itself as digitally-savvy and progressive institution. Notably, it was the first U.S. school to make it a requirement for students to take computer programming lessons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NuVu's program doesn't come cheap. It costs $8,000 per student per trimester. The company offers scholarships, and to Arida's credit, he's looking for ways to involve students from public schools in the area by forging partnerships with neighboring public schools to make NuVu available as an elective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for most entrepreneurs, selling schools (particularly budget-strapped public schools) on incorporating PBL programs into their core curriculum is an ongoing challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We haven’t seen many of these project-based learning programs scale rapidly,\" said Michael Staton, an investor at education-focused venture firm Learn Capital. \"Partnering with schools is fine if you can figure out how to do that efficiently,\" Staton added. \"But most entrepreneurs have no idea.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The crux of the problem, according to Staton, is that most schools are sticking to core subjects and the bell system, which doesn't leave much time for exploratory projects. Outside of school, most students can only access project-based programs online and in their own time. The best known services are \u003ca href=\"http://diy.org\" target=\"_blank\">DIY.org\u003c/a>, an instructional guide for budding makers, and the various project-based learn-to-code courses from \u003ca href=\"http://www.code.org\" target=\"_blank\">Code.org\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://generalassemb.ly/\" target=\"_blank\">General Assembly\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.khanacademy.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Khan Academy\u003c/a>. But most high schoolers would tell you that they're already overwhelmed with juggling college admissions, after-school, clubs, volunteering and homework. Good luck adding another project to their plate.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The Tide Is Turning\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>To make PBL more mainstream, the change may need to come from within. There's a movement afoot to make project-based learning an integral part of every child’s education. Organizations like \u003ca href=\"www.p21.org/%E2%80%8E\" target=\"_blank\">P21\u003c/a> (Partnership for 21st Century Skills) and \u003ca href=\"https://www.buckinstitute.org/%E2%80%8E\" target=\"_blank\">Buck Institute\u003c/a> are helping to bridge the gap between entrepreneurs, businesses, teachers and state superintendents. P21 partners with representatives in 18 states, including Arizona, California, and Massachusetts, and provides teachers with tools and resources for project-based learning. In addition, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation habitually provides funding to PBL schools, particularly those that foster digital skills. These organizations' aim is bring PBL programs into classrooms, rather than expecting students to participate in their free time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"e89b45862a810cde7c1e719b00f38e53\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools don't need to follow NuVu's model to the tee. In fact, this approach may seem radical, as students do not receive grades or formal examinations and the learning doesn't happen in physical classrooms. But teachers can take inspiration from NuVu and the various interactive online courses. For instance, Muscatine High School in Iowa has found success with its \u003ca href=\"http://www.g-squared.info/\" target=\"_blank\">G2 Global Generation Exponential Learning\u003c/a> initiative. High schoolers learn math and engineering in classrooms and by making water purification systems, or building statistical models for new bus routes. Younger students at middle school research trash statistics, and participate in oral history projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arida hopes that NuVu's program will pave the way for ed-tech entrepreneurs to launch similar ventures in other states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We're presenting a different way to think about education, he said. \"Students are empowered to be creative, and actually execute on their ideas. Isn't that the lesson we should be teaching our kids?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Christina Farr is a San Francisco-based journalist covering health technology. She previously wrote for Venture Beat, The Bay Citizen and SFGate.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35238\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-35238\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/space1-e1398279037576.jpg\" alt=\"space1\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/space1-e1398279037576.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/space1-e1398279037576-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/space1-e1398279037576-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Christina Farr\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">It took just a few weeks for a group of Boston-based teenagers to develop an affordable prosthetic hand for children. These teens took a brief hiatus from school to enroll in \u003ca href=\"https://cambridge.nuvustudio.com/discover\" target=\"_blank\">NuVu Studio\u003c/a>, a project-based learning program in Cambridge, Mass. that pairs students with real-world projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On their first day at NuVu, students were split into groups of 10, assigned a mentor (typically a doctoral student) and a theme, like “the future of global warming” or “balloon mapping.” In the most recent health-themed studio, one of these teams mocked up the prosthetic hand, after conducting interviews with patients, the families of amputees, physicians, and engineers in the Boston area. The students ultimately hacked MakerBot's original files to make their design on a 3D printer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NuVu is the brainchild of Saeed Arida, a former PhD student from MIT who believes that young people should be taught to solve real-world problems, like using new materials to design higher-quality prosthetics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Studios are not subjects in the traditional sense, as they involve finding a solution for a very real human problem,\" said Arida. \"What students do here is a very different kind of educational experience.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Here's How NuVu describes the program:\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 30px\">NuVu is a full-time magnet innovation center for middle and high school students. NuVu’s pedagogy is based on the architectural Studio model and geared around multi-disciplinary, collaborative projects. We basically teach students how to navigate the messiness of the creative process, from inception to completion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u003cstrong>No Courses:\u003c/strong> Instead, we have studios. Around 12 kids work closely with their 2 coaches on solving big (and small) open-ended problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u003cstrong>No Subjects:\u003c/strong> Instead, everything is fused together. Students find themselves moving between a studio that requires them to design a telepresence robot to another that requires them to re-imagine Boston with a cable car system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u003cstrong>No Classrooms\u003c/strong>: Instead, we have an open space that changes all the time to adapt to the needs of every studio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u003cstrong>No One-Hour Schedule:\u003c/strong> Instead, students spend two weeks from 9-3 solving one problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp style=\"padding-left: 30px\">\u003cstrong>No Grades:\u003c/strong> Instead, we have portfolios that document students' design decisions and show their final products.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>But can anyone visualize this happening in today's public schools? Project-based learning programs like NuVu are not particularly common throughout the U.S., with notable exceptions like \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/02/how-do-we-create-rich-learning-opportunities-for-all-students/\" target=\"_blank\">High Tech High\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/05/what-it-takes-to-become-a-project-based-school/\" target=\"_blank\">New Tech Network\u003c/a>. Most K-12 classrooms in America are fairly new to project-based learning, or don’t offer it at all. Typically speaking, only the most elite schools in the wealthiest neighborhoods can afford to experiment with PBL.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NuVu got its start by partnering with Beaver County Day School in Brookline, Mass., an elite independent school attended by the sons and daughters of Harvard and MIT graduates, which is positioning itself as digitally-savvy and progressive institution. Notably, it was the first U.S. school to make it a requirement for students to take computer programming lessons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NuVu's program doesn't come cheap. It costs $8,000 per student per trimester. The company offers scholarships, and to Arida's credit, he's looking for ways to involve students from public schools in the area by forging partnerships with neighboring public schools to make NuVu available as an elective.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But for most entrepreneurs, selling schools (particularly budget-strapped public schools) on incorporating PBL programs into their core curriculum is an ongoing challenge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We haven’t seen many of these project-based learning programs scale rapidly,\" said Michael Staton, an investor at education-focused venture firm Learn Capital. \"Partnering with schools is fine if you can figure out how to do that efficiently,\" Staton added. \"But most entrepreneurs have no idea.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The crux of the problem, according to Staton, is that most schools are sticking to core subjects and the bell system, which doesn't leave much time for exploratory projects. Outside of school, most students can only access project-based programs online and in their own time. The best known services are \u003ca href=\"http://diy.org\" target=\"_blank\">DIY.org\u003c/a>, an instructional guide for budding makers, and the various project-based learn-to-code courses from \u003ca href=\"http://www.code.org\" target=\"_blank\">Code.org\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://generalassemb.ly/\" target=\"_blank\">General Assembly\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"https://www.khanacademy.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Khan Academy\u003c/a>. But most high schoolers would tell you that they're already overwhelmed with juggling college admissions, after-school, clubs, volunteering and homework. Good luck adding another project to their plate.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The Tide Is Turning\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>To make PBL more mainstream, the change may need to come from within. There's a movement afoot to make project-based learning an integral part of every child’s education. Organizations like \u003ca href=\"www.p21.org/%E2%80%8E\" target=\"_blank\">P21\u003c/a> (Partnership for 21st Century Skills) and \u003ca href=\"https://www.buckinstitute.org/%E2%80%8E\" target=\"_blank\">Buck Institute\u003c/a> are helping to bridge the gap between entrepreneurs, businesses, teachers and state superintendents. P21 partners with representatives in 18 states, including Arizona, California, and Massachusetts, and provides teachers with tools and resources for project-based learning. In addition, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation habitually provides funding to PBL schools, particularly those that foster digital skills. These organizations' aim is bring PBL programs into classrooms, rather than expecting students to participate in their free time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Schools don't need to follow NuVu's model to the tee. In fact, this approach may seem radical, as students do not receive grades or formal examinations and the learning doesn't happen in physical classrooms. But teachers can take inspiration from NuVu and the various interactive online courses. For instance, Muscatine High School in Iowa has found success with its \u003ca href=\"http://www.g-squared.info/\" target=\"_blank\">G2 Global Generation Exponential Learning\u003c/a> initiative. High schoolers learn math and engineering in classrooms and by making water purification systems, or building statistical models for new bus routes. Younger students at middle school research trash statistics, and participate in oral history projects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Arida hopes that NuVu's program will pave the way for ed-tech entrepreneurs to launch similar ventures in other states.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We're presenting a different way to think about education, he said. \"Students are empowered to be creative, and actually execute on their ideas. Isn't that the lesson we should be teaching our kids?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Christina Farr is a San Francisco-based journalist covering health technology. She previously wrote for Venture Beat, The Bay Citizen and SFGate.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35153\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-35153\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/5350633605_3088f877b6_z-e1398095831568.jpg\" alt=\"5350633605_3088f877b6_z\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/5350633605_3088f877b6_z-e1398095831568.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/5350633605_3088f877b6_z-e1398095831568-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/5350633605_3088f877b6_z-e1398095831568-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Physically acting out a written text—as an actor would walk himself through the gestures and emotions of a soliloquy during rehearsal—is an effective way to \u003ca href=\"http://anniemurphypaul.com/2014/01/how-to-use-your-memory-the-way-actors-do/\" target=\"_blank\">commit that text to memory\u003c/a>. For adults, this process of enactment imbues abstract words with concrete meaning, fixing them more firmly in our minds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For children, acting out words on the page can also yield benefits. Especially for beginning readers, physically moving objects or one’s own body can provide a crucial bridge between real-life people, things, and actions, and the printed words meant to represent them. Fluent readers take this correspondence for granted, but many children find it difficult to grasp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In everyday life, after all, the words “dog” or “cup” are usually encountered when there’s an actual dog or cup around. But inside the pages of a book, words must be understood in the absence of such real-world “referents.” The research of Arthur Glenberg, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University, has demonstrated that when children are given the opportunity to act out a written text, their reading comprehension can actually \u003cem>double\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003ca href=\"http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2004-18154-002\" target=\"_blank\">one\u003c/a> of his studies, Glenberg asked first- and second-graders to read stories about life on a farm. The children were also given farm-related toys, such as a miniature barn, tractor and cow. Half of the kids were directed to simply read the stories a second time. The other half were instructed to use the toys to act out what they were reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After reading the sentence “The farmer drove the tractor to the barn,” for example, the child would move the toy tractor over to the toy barn. Youngsters who acted out the sentences were better able to make inferences about the text, and they later remembered much more about the stories than those who merely reread them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other \u003ca href=\"http://www.edweek.org/media/improvingreading-36read.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">studies\u003c/a>, Glenberg has found that the acting-out technique can help children solve word problems in math, too: elementary-school mathematics students who act out the text in word problems are more accurate in their calculations and more likely to reach the right answer. (In one such investigation, for example, students were asked to act out a zookeeper’s distribution of food to his animals while figuring out how many fish the hippos and alligators need.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In these experiments, it seems that enacting the “story” told within the math problem helps students identify the information important for its solution: enacting made them 35 percent less likely to be distracted by irrelevant numbers or other details included in the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eventually, fluent readers become capable of “enacting” these scenarios in their heads (our brains appear always to be \u003ca href=\"http://anniemurphypaul.com/2014/04/what-happens-in-our-brains-as-we-read/\" target=\"_blank\">drawing on our experiences of bodily sensations and movements \u003c/a>as we read, creating mental simulations of the stories on the page). But while they’re still learning, less adept readers can benefit from seeing and feeling those printed words come to life under their hands.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35153\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-35153\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/5350633605_3088f877b6_z-e1398095831568.jpg\" alt=\"5350633605_3088f877b6_z\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/5350633605_3088f877b6_z-e1398095831568.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/5350633605_3088f877b6_z-e1398095831568-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/5350633605_3088f877b6_z-e1398095831568-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Physically acting out a written text—as an actor would walk himself through the gestures and emotions of a soliloquy during rehearsal—is an effective way to \u003ca href=\"http://anniemurphypaul.com/2014/01/how-to-use-your-memory-the-way-actors-do/\" target=\"_blank\">commit that text to memory\u003c/a>. For adults, this process of enactment imbues abstract words with concrete meaning, fixing them more firmly in our minds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For children, acting out words on the page can also yield benefits. Especially for beginning readers, physically moving objects or one’s own body can provide a crucial bridge between real-life people, things, and actions, and the printed words meant to represent them. Fluent readers take this correspondence for granted, but many children find it difficult to grasp.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In everyday life, after all, the words “dog” or “cup” are usually encountered when there’s an actual dog or cup around. But inside the pages of a book, words must be understood in the absence of such real-world “referents.” The research of Arthur Glenberg, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University, has demonstrated that when children are given the opportunity to act out a written text, their reading comprehension can actually \u003cem>double\u003c/em>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003ca href=\"http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2004-18154-002\" target=\"_blank\">one\u003c/a> of his studies, Glenberg asked first- and second-graders to read stories about life on a farm. The children were also given farm-related toys, such as a miniature barn, tractor and cow. Half of the kids were directed to simply read the stories a second time. The other half were instructed to use the toys to act out what they were reading.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After reading the sentence “The farmer drove the tractor to the barn,” for example, the child would move the toy tractor over to the toy barn. Youngsters who acted out the sentences were better able to make inferences about the text, and they later remembered much more about the stories than those who merely reread them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In other \u003ca href=\"http://www.edweek.org/media/improvingreading-36read.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">studies\u003c/a>, Glenberg has found that the acting-out technique can help children solve word problems in math, too: elementary-school mathematics students who act out the text in word problems are more accurate in their calculations and more likely to reach the right answer. (In one such investigation, for example, students were asked to act out a zookeeper’s distribution of food to his animals while figuring out how many fish the hippos and alligators need.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In these experiments, it seems that enacting the “story” told within the math problem helps students identify the information important for its solution: enacting made them 35 percent less likely to be distracted by irrelevant numbers or other details included in the problem.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Eventually, fluent readers become capable of “enacting” these scenarios in their heads (our brains appear always to be \u003ca href=\"http://anniemurphypaul.com/2014/04/what-happens-in-our-brains-as-we-read/\" target=\"_blank\">drawing on our experiences of bodily sensations and movements \u003c/a>as we read, creating mental simulations of the stories on the page). But while they’re still learning, less adept readers can benefit from seeing and feeling those printed words come to life under their hands.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "How to Reinvent Project Based Learning to Be More Meaningful",
"title": "How to Reinvent Project Based Learning to Be More Meaningful",
"headTitle": "PROJECT BASED LEARNING | MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34630\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 638px\">\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/michale/2857917490/sizes/z/\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34630\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176.jpg\" alt=\"2857917490_ec823748d8_z\" width=\"638\" height=\"430\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176.jpg 638w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176-400x270.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176-320x216.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 638px) 100vw, 638px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Thom Markham\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">This is a crucial time for education. Every system in every country is in the process of figuring out how to reboot education to teach skills, application, and attitude in addition to recall and understanding. Helping students be able to grapple with increased problem solving and inquiry, be better critical and creative thinkers, show greater independence and engagement, and exhibit skills as presenters and collaborators is the challenge of the moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's why so many educators are using the project based learning (PBL) model. PBL has proven to be a means for setting up the kind of problem-solving challenges that engage students in deeper learning and critical inquiry. It requires students to research, collaborate, decide on the value of information and evidence, accept feedback, design solutions, and present findings in a public space—all factors that create the conditions under which high performance and mastery are most likely to emerge. The rise of PBL, in fact, is a success story for education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, it’s also time to reboot PBL. It continues to be misinterpreted as a single teaching strategy rather than as a set of design principles that allow us to introduce the philosophy of inquiry into education in an intelligent and grounded way. It’s plagued by misunderstandings about when it \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/what-project-based-learning-is-and-isnt/\" target=\"_blank\">should be used, and when not\u003c/a>, and to what extent it can fulfill the mandate of a standards-based system. Too often, it ends with enthusiastic students delivering mediocre work — and teachers aren’t sure what went wrong or right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If PBL is to become a powerful, accepted model of instruction in the future, a vocabulary change may be in order -- preferably to the term \u003cem>project based inquiry\u003c/em>. It’s time to not only address the flaws in PBL, but to reinvent it in a way that leads to deeper learning, creative inquiry, and a better fit with a collaborative world in which doing and knowing are one thing. Here are thoughts about five areas in which PBL needs to move forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>1. Put PBL on a continuum of inquiry.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Infusing inquiry into the curriculum is the goal, so that instruction starts with questions rather than broadcasting content. But PBL is only one way to do that. Good teachers use many methods to help students observe, pose questions, engage in experimentation and error, and learn to analyze and reason. So it’s not necessary to use PBL 24/7 across all subjects. Instead:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>First, think skills.\u003c/strong> A coherent approach to inquiry begins with knowing that skills, not content, underlie the inquiry process. To link PBL with other parts of the school, have all teachers to sign onto the two chief skills required in PBL, teamwork and presentation. Use school-wide rubrics to assess the skills. Think of projects as the time when students really practice those skills at a high level for public consumption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Think strategically.\u003c/strong> Plan for PBL over the course of the year, but don’t expect every teacher to do a project. For instance, step back and analyze an entire ninth-grade class. How many projects will they experience in the course of the year? Who will conduct the projects? If students participate in three or four projects every year, they will get what they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Use PBL for entrepreneurial inquiry.\u003c/strong> When teachers want students to go deep into an important topic, grapple with a community issue, or experience the persistence and intellectual rigor necessary to dig in to something meaningful, that’s the perfect time for PBL. Otherwise, normal inquiry gets the job done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Differentiate subjects.\u003c/strong> Not all subjects fit PBL in the same way. Courses such as AP Calculus and Physics may use a shorter, more contained problem-based approach, or a more activity-based approach. Humanities projects may take on community issues. Both approaches are valid and use similar design principles, but have different objectives.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>2. Blend surface knowledge and deeper learning.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>It is impossible at this historical juncture to figure out how much students need to put into hard-wired long term memory versus how much information they simply download, pass through, and apply. Google is ruining the curriculum, no doubt about it. On the other hand, you have to know in order to think. But in the zeal to expand the constructivist side of PBL, we’re losing the knowing—the kind of facts, terms, and vocabulary of the discipline that allow a student to express knowledge coherently. This is not a matter of test preparation as much as a design issue to make sure students have a sufficient knowledge base. Some solutions:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"972d38da16bb1880fe85920c8dfe3242\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Let go of theory.\u003c/strong> In theory, a question or challenge posed in PBL is so compelling that students will learn all essential facts necessary to answer the question. In practice, this doesn’t work. Teachers must make an intentional effort to design surface knowledge into a project. This is not so easy, because PBL focuses on authentic questions that lead to open ended problem solving. Content can get lost, and often does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Analyze the project.\u003c/strong> Start a project design with a creative challenge and end with an authentic product, but carefully analyze the design to make sure essential facts and concepts will be taught. If students require certain facts and concepts for tests, but those facts don’t fit into the design, take a breath and just teach them. The project won’t fail because you took one day to ‘cover’ material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Use direct instruction.\u003c/strong> Direct instruction is not the same as boring lectures—and it’s time to distinguish them. Direct instruction works quite well when dosed with questioning and small group discussions. Use it to transmit essential information efficiently and quickly during the course of a project.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>3. Start with a sophisticated student-centered culture.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The greatest number of failures in PBL occurs in schools that attempt to graft PBL onto a traditional, row-centered, front of the room classroom culture. A teacher-centered system and a student-centered system are different life forms. One is focused on content delivery and a \"hand it in, hand it back\" approach; the other requires openness, coaching, and an \"errors are fine\" philosophy. Unless a teacher uses the tools of a positive culture and high performance, students don’t engage at the level necessary to persist, investigate, and hold themselves accountable for mastery. Creating this culture requires more than liking your students. Instead, it is necessary for educators to intentionally teach students to perform skillfully and learn to coach those skills at a high level. Some steps:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reflect.\u003c/strong> Your personality and attitude, particularly listening skills and openness, will directly affect the quality of the project. System wide, remember that PBL is personality driven. If certain teachers don’t embrace PBL, but do a good job of stimulating inquiry, let them be. Everyone will be happier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Build student capacity.\u003c/strong> Prior to projects, take time for students to reflect on their skills and attitudes, practice team building, setting norms, and examining responsibilities and aspirations. For PBL to succeed, the entire pace of instruction must be slowed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Know the neuroscience.\u003c/strong> Every study shows the same results: Your attitude, beliefs, and hidden expectations are communicated to students—and change their brain. Take care with messaging.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>4. Make collaboration as powerful in school as it is in life.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Group work and cooperative learning are giving PBL a hangover. It is time to make a fundamental shift in the direction of teamwork. In a relationship-driven world, the era of the individual scholar is coming to an end. PBL is a perfect method for helping reveal how peers will work together in the future to create and analyze content. Teachers can speed this process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Make collaboration the foundational skill.\u003c/strong> Instead of seeing 21st-century skills as a laundry list, prioritize by making teamwork the basis for academic work, particularly in projects. Move from the loose language of \"groups\" to the more accountable language of teams and cohorts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Make teams purposeful.\u003c/strong> Bring \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/how-to-foster-collaboration-and-team-spirit/\" target=\"_blank\">teams together for the purpose of creating better products\u003c/a>, not just discussing and brainstorming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Require teams to participate deeply in the design process.\u003c/strong> Have them regularly and frequently exchange design ideas, test prototypes, follow protocols, use the vocabulary of the discipline, and exhibit mature responses to feedback from peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Make peer review the norm.\u003c/strong> Don’t look at any student work until it has gone through a peer review process that pushes students to present their best work for your evaluation and feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>5. Understand that PBL cannot be done alone.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>PBL is a complex form of teaching, with many moving parts and a creative element. Teachers will benefit enormously, and grow their expertise much faster, if they can discuss and refine their projects together. The opposite is true, also; if schools continue to limit collaborative time to Monday mornings between 8 am and 9 am, or something similar, PBL will fail. Inquiry simply demands more depth and conversation than the traditional system allows. Many changes are required here, but the step with the greatest leverage? Try this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Institutionalize Critical Friends Protocols.\u003c/strong> A 25 minute protocol, in which teachers present ideas to peers and receive feedback about a project in a respectful, professional environment, is a game changer. It sets a higher bar for discourse, encourages teachers to think more deeply, and takes education away from its familiar staples of \"neat\" ideas and endless inputs. The protocols work well in department meetings, staff meetings, or at PD days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-admin/thom@thommarkham.com\">Thom Markham\u003c/a> is a psychologist, school redesign consultant, and the author of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Project-Based-Learning-Design-Coaching/dp/1616233613/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334257826&sr=1-3\">Project Based Learning Design and Coaching Guide: Expert tools for inquiry and innovation for K-12 educators\u003c/a>. Find many more resources on his website, \u003ca href=\"http://www.thommarkham.com/\">www.thommarkham.com\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Project-based learning continues to be misinterpreted as a single teaching strategy rather than as a set of design principles that allow us to introduce the philosophy of inquiry into education in an intelligent and grounded way. It’s time to not only address the flaws in PBL, but to reinvent it in a way that leads to deeper learning, creative inquiry, and a better fit with a collaborative world in which doing and knowing are one thing. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_34630\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 638px\">\u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/michale/2857917490/sizes/z/\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-34630\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176.jpg\" alt=\"2857917490_ec823748d8_z\" width=\"638\" height=\"430\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176.jpg 638w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176-400x270.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/03/2857917490_ec823748d8_z-e1395254848176-320x216.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 638px) 100vw, 638px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Thom Markham\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">This is a crucial time for education. Every system in every country is in the process of figuring out how to reboot education to teach skills, application, and attitude in addition to recall and understanding. Helping students be able to grapple with increased problem solving and inquiry, be better critical and creative thinkers, show greater independence and engagement, and exhibit skills as presenters and collaborators is the challenge of the moment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's why so many educators are using the project based learning (PBL) model. PBL has proven to be a means for setting up the kind of problem-solving challenges that engage students in deeper learning and critical inquiry. It requires students to research, collaborate, decide on the value of information and evidence, accept feedback, design solutions, and present findings in a public space—all factors that create the conditions under which high performance and mastery are most likely to emerge. The rise of PBL, in fact, is a success story for education.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, it’s also time to reboot PBL. It continues to be misinterpreted as a single teaching strategy rather than as a set of design principles that allow us to introduce the philosophy of inquiry into education in an intelligent and grounded way. It’s plagued by misunderstandings about when it \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/what-project-based-learning-is-and-isnt/\" target=\"_blank\">should be used, and when not\u003c/a>, and to what extent it can fulfill the mandate of a standards-based system. Too often, it ends with enthusiastic students delivering mediocre work — and teachers aren’t sure what went wrong or right.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If PBL is to become a powerful, accepted model of instruction in the future, a vocabulary change may be in order -- preferably to the term \u003cem>project based inquiry\u003c/em>. It’s time to not only address the flaws in PBL, but to reinvent it in a way that leads to deeper learning, creative inquiry, and a better fit with a collaborative world in which doing and knowing are one thing. Here are thoughts about five areas in which PBL needs to move forward.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>1. Put PBL on a continuum of inquiry.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Infusing inquiry into the curriculum is the goal, so that instruction starts with questions rather than broadcasting content. But PBL is only one way to do that. Good teachers use many methods to help students observe, pose questions, engage in experimentation and error, and learn to analyze and reason. So it’s not necessary to use PBL 24/7 across all subjects. Instead:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>First, think skills.\u003c/strong> A coherent approach to inquiry begins with knowing that skills, not content, underlie the inquiry process. To link PBL with other parts of the school, have all teachers to sign onto the two chief skills required in PBL, teamwork and presentation. Use school-wide rubrics to assess the skills. Think of projects as the time when students really practice those skills at a high level for public consumption.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Think strategically.\u003c/strong> Plan for PBL over the course of the year, but don’t expect every teacher to do a project. For instance, step back and analyze an entire ninth-grade class. How many projects will they experience in the course of the year? Who will conduct the projects? If students participate in three or four projects every year, they will get what they need.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Use PBL for entrepreneurial inquiry.\u003c/strong> When teachers want students to go deep into an important topic, grapple with a community issue, or experience the persistence and intellectual rigor necessary to dig in to something meaningful, that’s the perfect time for PBL. Otherwise, normal inquiry gets the job done.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Differentiate subjects.\u003c/strong> Not all subjects fit PBL in the same way. Courses such as AP Calculus and Physics may use a shorter, more contained problem-based approach, or a more activity-based approach. Humanities projects may take on community issues. Both approaches are valid and use similar design principles, but have different objectives.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>2. Blend surface knowledge and deeper learning.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>It is impossible at this historical juncture to figure out how much students need to put into hard-wired long term memory versus how much information they simply download, pass through, and apply. Google is ruining the curriculum, no doubt about it. On the other hand, you have to know in order to think. But in the zeal to expand the constructivist side of PBL, we’re losing the knowing—the kind of facts, terms, and vocabulary of the discipline that allow a student to express knowledge coherently. This is not a matter of test preparation as much as a design issue to make sure students have a sufficient knowledge base. Some solutions:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Let go of theory.\u003c/strong> In theory, a question or challenge posed in PBL is so compelling that students will learn all essential facts necessary to answer the question. In practice, this doesn’t work. Teachers must make an intentional effort to design surface knowledge into a project. This is not so easy, because PBL focuses on authentic questions that lead to open ended problem solving. Content can get lost, and often does.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Analyze the project.\u003c/strong> Start a project design with a creative challenge and end with an authentic product, but carefully analyze the design to make sure essential facts and concepts will be taught. If students require certain facts and concepts for tests, but those facts don’t fit into the design, take a breath and just teach them. The project won’t fail because you took one day to ‘cover’ material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Use direct instruction.\u003c/strong> Direct instruction is not the same as boring lectures—and it’s time to distinguish them. Direct instruction works quite well when dosed with questioning and small group discussions. Use it to transmit essential information efficiently and quickly during the course of a project.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>3. Start with a sophisticated student-centered culture.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The greatest number of failures in PBL occurs in schools that attempt to graft PBL onto a traditional, row-centered, front of the room classroom culture. A teacher-centered system and a student-centered system are different life forms. One is focused on content delivery and a \"hand it in, hand it back\" approach; the other requires openness, coaching, and an \"errors are fine\" philosophy. Unless a teacher uses the tools of a positive culture and high performance, students don’t engage at the level necessary to persist, investigate, and hold themselves accountable for mastery. Creating this culture requires more than liking your students. Instead, it is necessary for educators to intentionally teach students to perform skillfully and learn to coach those skills at a high level. Some steps:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reflect.\u003c/strong> Your personality and attitude, particularly listening skills and openness, will directly affect the quality of the project. System wide, remember that PBL is personality driven. If certain teachers don’t embrace PBL, but do a good job of stimulating inquiry, let them be. Everyone will be happier.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Build student capacity.\u003c/strong> Prior to projects, take time for students to reflect on their skills and attitudes, practice team building, setting norms, and examining responsibilities and aspirations. For PBL to succeed, the entire pace of instruction must be slowed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Know the neuroscience.\u003c/strong> Every study shows the same results: Your attitude, beliefs, and hidden expectations are communicated to students—and change their brain. Take care with messaging.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>4. Make collaboration as powerful in school as it is in life.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Group work and cooperative learning are giving PBL a hangover. It is time to make a fundamental shift in the direction of teamwork. In a relationship-driven world, the era of the individual scholar is coming to an end. PBL is a perfect method for helping reveal how peers will work together in the future to create and analyze content. Teachers can speed this process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Make collaboration the foundational skill.\u003c/strong> Instead of seeing 21st-century skills as a laundry list, prioritize by making teamwork the basis for academic work, particularly in projects. Move from the loose language of \"groups\" to the more accountable language of teams and cohorts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Make teams purposeful.\u003c/strong> Bring \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/how-to-foster-collaboration-and-team-spirit/\" target=\"_blank\">teams together for the purpose of creating better products\u003c/a>, not just discussing and brainstorming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Require teams to participate deeply in the design process.\u003c/strong> Have them regularly and frequently exchange design ideas, test prototypes, follow protocols, use the vocabulary of the discipline, and exhibit mature responses to feedback from peers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Make peer review the norm.\u003c/strong> Don’t look at any student work until it has gone through a peer review process that pushes students to present their best work for your evaluation and feedback.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>5. Understand that PBL cannot be done alone.\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>PBL is a complex form of teaching, with many moving parts and a creative element. Teachers will benefit enormously, and grow their expertise much faster, if they can discuss and refine their projects together. The opposite is true, also; if schools continue to limit collaborative time to Monday mornings between 8 am and 9 am, or something similar, PBL will fail. Inquiry simply demands more depth and conversation than the traditional system allows. Many changes are required here, but the step with the greatest leverage? Try this.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Institutionalize Critical Friends Protocols.\u003c/strong> A 25 minute protocol, in which teachers present ideas to peers and receive feedback about a project in a respectful, professional environment, is a game changer. It sets a higher bar for discourse, encourages teachers to think more deeply, and takes education away from its familiar staples of \"neat\" ideas and endless inputs. The protocols work well in department meetings, staff meetings, or at PD days.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-admin/thom@thommarkham.com\">Thom Markham\u003c/a> is a psychologist, school redesign consultant, and the author of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Project-Based-Learning-Design-Coaching/dp/1616233613/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1334257826&sr=1-3\">Project Based Learning Design and Coaching Guide: Expert tools for inquiry and innovation for K-12 educators\u003c/a>. Find many more resources on his website, \u003ca href=\"http://www.thommarkham.com/\">www.thommarkham.com\u003c/a>.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_33129\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-33129\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2013/12/erinscott_-7183.jpg\" alt=\"erinscott_-7183\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/12/erinscott_-7183.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/12/erinscott_-7183-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/12/erinscott_-7183-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">It might feel overwhelming to keep track of the latest education trends, jargon, and ed-tech products. But for many educators -- and most MindShift readers -- the topic of focus that stays top-of-mind above the chatter is \u003cem>learning\u003c/em>. A look through the most popular MindShift posts this year reveals that, despite all the news about iPad rollouts and Common Core, the strongest thread of interest for our readers remains the topic of learning: student-directed learning, inquiry-based approaches to teaching, and the desire to help students learn how to learn in a changing world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>POSITIVE CONDITIONS FOR LEARNING\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Adults can make a big impact on how students view their own learning process and capabilities, as described in the article \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/giving-good-praise-to-girls-what-messages-stick/\">Giving Good Praise to Girls: What Messages Stick\u003c/a>. Research by Stanford professor Carol Dweck has shown that students who demonstrate a “growth mindset” about their abilities fare much better than those who believe their abilities in any given area are fixed -- that either they're smart or they're not. Educators and parents can help encourage a growth mindset by praising the effort children put into their work, not the byproduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we've shown is that when you praise someone, say, ‘You’re smart at this,’ the next time they struggle, they think they’re not,” Dweck said. “It’s really about praising the process they engage in, not how smart they are or how good they are at it, but taking on difficulty, trying many different strategies, sticking to it and achieving over time.” Her research also shows that girls are more susceptible to the fixed mindset than boys, especially when it comes to math. Dweck’s research asks educators and parents to think carefully about the messages they're sending to children, even at a young age. The praise a parent gives her child between the ages of one and three affects that child’s ability to overcome challenges five years later.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“What we need to do is be sure that the current generation of children has the attentional capacities that other generations had naturally before the distractions of digital devices.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Just as adults should be careful how and what they praise, they may also want to spend concentrated time helping kids ignore distractions and focus on a single task. In the article \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/12/age-of-distraction-why-its-crucial-for-students-to-learn-to-focus/\">Age of Distraction: Why It's Crucial For Students to Learn How to Focus, \u003c/a>Daniel Goleman presents compelling research suggesting that the ability to focus has more impact on future success than socio-economic background or IQ. “The more children and teens are natural focusers, the better able they’ll be to use the digital tool for what they have to get done and then to use it in ways that they enjoy,” Goleman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If children don’t learn to tune out distracting deluge of texts and online messages, they may not develop the neural pathways that lead to empathy, as well as the ability to stay on task and self-regulate. “The circuitry for paying attention is identical for the circuits for managing distressing emotion,” Goleman said. Even as he advocates a “digital sabbath,” regular time away from devices to help gain balance, he recognizes devices themselves aren’t the enemy. “What we need to do is be sure that the current generation of children has the attentional capacities that other generations had naturally before the distractions of digital devices,” Goleman said. “It’s about using the devices smartly but having the capacity to concentrate as you need to, when you want to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same premise comes up again in the article \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/05/how-does-multitasking-change-the-way-kids-learn/\">How Does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn?\u003c/a> The article describes a study that showed that students stayed on task only 65 percent of the time in a 15-minute period -- even with the knowledge that researchers were watching their study habits. That has big consequences for learning. When students multitask while studying, they come away with a shallower and spottier understanding of the material. And while checking a quick text doesn’t seem like a big deal, neuroscientists point out that reading email and texts are complex mental tasks that use the same parts of the brain as listening to a lecture or reading. Neuroscientists don’t believe it’s possible to multitask two complicated tasks at the same time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STUDENT INQUIRY AND INTEREST\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Educators are finding that student-driven learning based on interests and passions is one of the best ways to help students develop intrinsic motivation, and that theme has been shown to resonate with tens of thousands of MindShift readers.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">“If you inspire them to care about it and draw parallels with their world then they care and remember.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Perhaps one of the most basic elements of inquiry-based learning -- though a crucial one -- is knowing when to step back, according to educator Diana Laufenberg, the primary source in the article \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/creating-classrooms-we-need-8-ways-into-inquiry-learning/\">Creating Classrooms We Need: 8 Ways Into Inquiry Learning\u003c/a>. “There are vastly creative minds that are capable of doing intensely wonderful things with their learning but often we don’t let that live and breathe,” said Diana Laufenberg who taught history at Science Leadership Academy for many years. “Thankfully I got out of their way and let them do the work they were capable of.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also important to know when to step in. The inquiry process can provoke feelings of uncertainty, optimism, frustration, satisfaction, and disappointment, and in the article \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/5-tools-to-help-students-learn-how-to-learn/\">Tools to Help Students Learn How to Learn\u003c/a>, it becomes clear that educators are aware of key moments when a small intervention or offer of guidance can help mitigate emotions that might derail the student’s commitment to the project. One of the most difficult things about helping students learn how to learn is recognizing those small shifts in enthusiasm and energy and helping students to get beyond emotional roadblocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the most tried-and-true tactics -- learning through doing -- is the focus of another hugely popular article this year, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/what-project-based-learning-is-and-isnt/\">What Project-Based Learning Is -- And Isn't\u003c/a>. The best kinds of projects, the article argues, allows discovery that's embedded in the project, not offered before it begins or after it ends. Many teachers have found the best way to achieve this goal is by connecting learning to the real-world problems and experiences of students. “If you inspire them to care about it and draw parallels with their world then they care and remember,” said Azul Terronez, eighth-grade Humanities teacher at High Tech High. This process takes a lot of teacher planning, but doesn’t require any “teaching,” just a lot of guidance and an authentic audience as motivation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the article \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/dan-pink-how-teachers-can-sell-love-of-learning-to-students/\">How Teachers Can Sell Love of Learning to Students\u003c/a>, author Dan Pink says helping student find their own interests and passions resembles the job of a salesman. Pink, the author of \u003cem>To Sell Is Human,\u003c/em> argues against policies that standardize education and erase the power of individuals from the system. Standards-based learning and assessment make it easier for adults to evaluate children, Pink claims, but don’t necessarily lead to learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Busting open the standardized education system is the focus of another popular article,\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/09/a-school-with-no-teachers-where-students-teach-themselves/\"> A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves.\u003c/a> Launched by telecommunications magnate in France, the school, called 42, is for young people between 18 and 30 and is based on the idea that no educator can foresee problems of the future, so students need to become self-sufficient, independent learners who are used to problem-solving without any parameters. The school hopes to develop creativity and innovative skills by remaining outside the standard French education system, and achieve a more equitable environment by doing so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LISTS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MindShift readers love a meaty, informative list. One of the favorites this year,\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/10-ways-to-teach-innovation/\"> 10 Ways To Teach Innovation,\u003c/a> goes into detail about how teachers can inspire students by demonstrating a willingness to innovate themselves, by encouraging teamwork and by emphasizing skills and concepts over facts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And for teachers always on the look-out for tech tools that will foster innovation, inquiry, and creativity, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/07/13-free-web-tools-students-and-teachers-should-know-about/\">13 Free Web Tools Students and Teachers Should Know About\u003c/a> offers some smart ideas and strategies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "A look through the most popular MindShift posts this year reveals a strong interest in student-directed learning, inquiry-based approaches to teaching and the desire to help students learn how to learn in a changing world.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_33129\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-33129\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2013/12/erinscott_-7183.jpg\" alt=\"erinscott_-7183\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/12/erinscott_-7183.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/12/erinscott_-7183-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/12/erinscott_-7183-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">It might feel overwhelming to keep track of the latest education trends, jargon, and ed-tech products. But for many educators -- and most MindShift readers -- the topic of focus that stays top-of-mind above the chatter is \u003cem>learning\u003c/em>. A look through the most popular MindShift posts this year reveals that, despite all the news about iPad rollouts and Common Core, the strongest thread of interest for our readers remains the topic of learning: student-directed learning, inquiry-based approaches to teaching, and the desire to help students learn how to learn in a changing world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>POSITIVE CONDITIONS FOR LEARNING\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Adults can make a big impact on how students view their own learning process and capabilities, as described in the article \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/giving-good-praise-to-girls-what-messages-stick/\">Giving Good Praise to Girls: What Messages Stick\u003c/a>. Research by Stanford professor Carol Dweck has shown that students who demonstrate a “growth mindset” about their abilities fare much better than those who believe their abilities in any given area are fixed -- that either they're smart or they're not. Educators and parents can help encourage a growth mindset by praising the effort children put into their work, not the byproduct.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What we've shown is that when you praise someone, say, ‘You’re smart at this,’ the next time they struggle, they think they’re not,” Dweck said. “It’s really about praising the process they engage in, not how smart they are or how good they are at it, but taking on difficulty, trying many different strategies, sticking to it and achieving over time.” Her research also shows that girls are more susceptible to the fixed mindset than boys, especially when it comes to math. Dweck’s research asks educators and parents to think carefully about the messages they're sending to children, even at a young age. The praise a parent gives her child between the ages of one and three affects that child’s ability to overcome challenges five years later.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“What we need to do is be sure that the current generation of children has the attentional capacities that other generations had naturally before the distractions of digital devices.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Just as adults should be careful how and what they praise, they may also want to spend concentrated time helping kids ignore distractions and focus on a single task. In the article \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/12/age-of-distraction-why-its-crucial-for-students-to-learn-to-focus/\">Age of Distraction: Why It's Crucial For Students to Learn How to Focus, \u003c/a>Daniel Goleman presents compelling research suggesting that the ability to focus has more impact on future success than socio-economic background or IQ. “The more children and teens are natural focusers, the better able they’ll be to use the digital tool for what they have to get done and then to use it in ways that they enjoy,” Goleman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If children don’t learn to tune out distracting deluge of texts and online messages, they may not develop the neural pathways that lead to empathy, as well as the ability to stay on task and self-regulate. “The circuitry for paying attention is identical for the circuits for managing distressing emotion,” Goleman said. Even as he advocates a “digital sabbath,” regular time away from devices to help gain balance, he recognizes devices themselves aren’t the enemy. “What we need to do is be sure that the current generation of children has the attentional capacities that other generations had naturally before the distractions of digital devices,” Goleman said. “It’s about using the devices smartly but having the capacity to concentrate as you need to, when you want to.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The same premise comes up again in the article \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/05/how-does-multitasking-change-the-way-kids-learn/\">How Does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn?\u003c/a> The article describes a study that showed that students stayed on task only 65 percent of the time in a 15-minute period -- even with the knowledge that researchers were watching their study habits. That has big consequences for learning. When students multitask while studying, they come away with a shallower and spottier understanding of the material. And while checking a quick text doesn’t seem like a big deal, neuroscientists point out that reading email and texts are complex mental tasks that use the same parts of the brain as listening to a lecture or reading. Neuroscientists don’t believe it’s possible to multitask two complicated tasks at the same time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STUDENT INQUIRY AND INTEREST\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Educators are finding that student-driven learning based on interests and passions is one of the best ways to help students develop intrinsic motivation, and that theme has been shown to resonate with tens of thousands of MindShift readers.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignright\">“If you inspire them to care about it and draw parallels with their world then they care and remember.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Perhaps one of the most basic elements of inquiry-based learning -- though a crucial one -- is knowing when to step back, according to educator Diana Laufenberg, the primary source in the article \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/creating-classrooms-we-need-8-ways-into-inquiry-learning/\">Creating Classrooms We Need: 8 Ways Into Inquiry Learning\u003c/a>. “There are vastly creative minds that are capable of doing intensely wonderful things with their learning but often we don’t let that live and breathe,” said Diana Laufenberg who taught history at Science Leadership Academy for many years. “Thankfully I got out of their way and let them do the work they were capable of.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s also important to know when to step in. The inquiry process can provoke feelings of uncertainty, optimism, frustration, satisfaction, and disappointment, and in the article \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/03/5-tools-to-help-students-learn-how-to-learn/\">Tools to Help Students Learn How to Learn\u003c/a>, it becomes clear that educators are aware of key moments when a small intervention or offer of guidance can help mitigate emotions that might derail the student’s commitment to the project. One of the most difficult things about helping students learn how to learn is recognizing those small shifts in enthusiasm and energy and helping students to get beyond emotional roadblocks.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of the most tried-and-true tactics -- learning through doing -- is the focus of another hugely popular article this year, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/what-project-based-learning-is-and-isnt/\">What Project-Based Learning Is -- And Isn't\u003c/a>. The best kinds of projects, the article argues, allows discovery that's embedded in the project, not offered before it begins or after it ends. Many teachers have found the best way to achieve this goal is by connecting learning to the real-world problems and experiences of students. “If you inspire them to care about it and draw parallels with their world then they care and remember,” said Azul Terronez, eighth-grade Humanities teacher at High Tech High. This process takes a lot of teacher planning, but doesn’t require any “teaching,” just a lot of guidance and an authentic audience as motivation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the article \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/dan-pink-how-teachers-can-sell-love-of-learning-to-students/\">How Teachers Can Sell Love of Learning to Students\u003c/a>, author Dan Pink says helping student find their own interests and passions resembles the job of a salesman. Pink, the author of \u003cem>To Sell Is Human,\u003c/em> argues against policies that standardize education and erase the power of individuals from the system. Standards-based learning and assessment make it easier for adults to evaluate children, Pink claims, but don’t necessarily lead to learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Busting open the standardized education system is the focus of another popular article,\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/09/a-school-with-no-teachers-where-students-teach-themselves/\"> A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves.\u003c/a> Launched by telecommunications magnate in France, the school, called 42, is for young people between 18 and 30 and is based on the idea that no educator can foresee problems of the future, so students need to become self-sufficient, independent learners who are used to problem-solving without any parameters. The school hopes to develop creativity and innovative skills by remaining outside the standard French education system, and achieve a more equitable environment by doing so.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LISTS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MindShift readers love a meaty, informative list. One of the favorites this year,\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/10-ways-to-teach-innovation/\"> 10 Ways To Teach Innovation,\u003c/a> goes into detail about how teachers can inspire students by demonstrating a willingness to innovate themselves, by encouraging teamwork and by emphasizing skills and concepts over facts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And for teachers always on the look-out for tech tools that will foster innovation, inquiry, and creativity, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/07/13-free-web-tools-students-and-teachers-should-know-about/\">13 Free Web Tools Students and Teachers Should Know About\u003c/a> offers some smart ideas and strategies.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"disqusTitle": "Kids Want to Know: How Is Science Relevant?",
"title": "Kids Want to Know: How Is Science Relevant?",
"headTitle": "MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_33102\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-33102\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2013/12/photo6_wide-8b69872de7bff65e5cfc1f7a661e4aca2b173743-s40-c85-640x359.jpg\" alt=\"Hands-on science activities like making bubble mitts at the Mission Science Workshop teach students about things like surface tension.\" width=\"640\" height=\"359\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hands-on science activities like making bubble mitts at the Mission Science Workshop teach students about things like surface tension.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Eric Westervelt\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Are American kids\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>being adequately prepared in the sciences to compete in a highly competitive, global high-tech workforce? A majority of American parents say no, \u003ca href=\"http://media.npr.org/documents/2013/dec/rwjf_npr_harvard_edpoll.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">according to a poll by NPR\u003c/a>, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly one-quarter of all parents said their child's school today doesn't put enough emphasis on science curricula. And 30 percent of parents with children in kindergarten up through fifth grade say there's too little emphasis on science. \u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We want to see these kids get excited about science and math. We're lagging!\" says\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>Elizabeth Hall, one poll respondent and a mother of two who lives in California's sprawling central valley north of Fresno.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hall says her state has created a culture of testing that has resulted in high rates of teacher burnout and low expectations. Her community, she laments, has made peace with academic mediocrity in the sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>'It's Just Another Class'\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Hall's daughters, a high school sophomore, is so frustrated and underwhelmed by her district's biology and chemistry classes that she is reconsidering her once-strong desire to train for a medical career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There's no enthusiasm from the teachers. There's no love of science. There's no showing these young people that science is important in their lives. It's just another class,\" Elizabeth Hall says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her daughter, 15-year-old Grace Hall, says there are solutions, in her view: Help show her how science is relevant to her life and future job prospects, she says, and go deeper into how students arrive at answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Right now, [in] chemistry it seems like, why are we learning this?\" Grace says. It would be a better learning experience, she says, \"if we were almost forced to really \u003cem>understand\u003c/em> instead of just memorizing things ... and [went] more in-depth in knowing why the answer is that answer.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"There's no love of science. There's no showing these young people that science is important in their lives. It's just another class.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>State and federal statistics show that at least one-third of all students entering higher education programs today need some kind of remedial or developmental course work. That fact underscores a worry about a widening science-skills gap that is shared by many parents and educators and some in business and academia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>International tests show that American students just aren't measuring up, especially in math and science. The recent Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study shows that the \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2013/12/03/248320179/pisa-tests-results-in-u-s-are-sobering\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. ranks 28th globally in science\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Making room for science, that is a big problem,\" says Mary Colson, an eighth-grade Earth science teacher in Moorhead, Minn. \"In the elementary schools now, the push is often for reading and math minutes. And science and social studies often get left out because there is just not enough time,\" she says. \"That's unfortunate, because often kids can't help themselves but be curious about the natural world.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Getting Kids Psyched For Science\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a recent afternoon in San Francisco, 9-year-olds from Paul Revere Elementary in the Bernal Heights neighborhood are captivated by a large Van de Graaff electrostatic generator — and the prospect of gently zapping a reporter. They implore me to put the metal part of my microphone on the machine — all in the name of science, of course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's semi-controlled chaos here, but that's the point. This is free-form explore time at the Mission Science Workshop in San Francisco. The program works with low-income and underserved public elementary schools to get kids excited about science. The program does it by mixing lots of hands-on learning with specific experiments that teachers can continue back in their own classrooms. \u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"cd1888c1549aacb69dc49d22a3c90b7b\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a lot of live reptiles, whole animal skeletons and a handful of project stations throughout the room, a large former high school auto shop-turned science lair. Think mad scientist meets Willy Wonka, with limited impulse controls. Fourth-graders Matthew Rivera and Jamal Damon gently tussle over two pythons while teacher Sarah-Jayne Reilly stands by. \u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I grew up in Ireland and really didn't do science until I was much older,\" Reilly says. \"And when I came here the first time, my mind was like, 'Wow! I just love the way the children are learning to think.' '\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We always tell them, 'Don't just believe me, try it for yourself, test it for yourself. It's OK to be wrong. It's OK to say what you're thinking,' \" she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For teacher Sam Haynor, the science workshop is about using imaginative experimentation to spark learning, and to counter the idea that science is a set of known facts that students should sit back quietly and receive from on high.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The idea of this place is really to say that it's constructive — that you have to build, you have to try,\" Haynor says. \"You have to experiment and fail and learn again. And that science really is just a quest to learn the truth.\"\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, he explains, maybe it's easier for some kids to learn about math and science by helping to make something that serves a real-world function, like a circuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Making Time 'For Students To Explore'\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's not all free-form exploration. After the pandemonium subsides, students semi-calmly work to build terrariums as they explore the life cycle of plants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"When they explore, they're excited. They find things they are interested in,\" says Paul Revere Elementary teacher Jessica Huang, who takes her classes to the workshop regularly. \"They want to go back to school and check out books about things that they've explored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"So I see it as a way of really opening their eyes to things that they didn't know that they would even be interested in,\" she adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's perhaps the kind of elementary school science program that many parents in NPR's education poll say is missing in their own communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Minnesota teacher Mary Colson has helped write a new set of national science standards called \u003ca href=\"http://www.nextgenscience.org\" target=\"_blank\">Next Generation Science Standards\u003c/a>. The standards emphasize getting kids engaged in practicing science, she says, and getting more students to think like scientists.\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Reduce the amount of information, reduce the number of facts that we ask kids to cram into their heads, so that there is time in the school day for students to explore, to try things out and then ... go back and revisit their ideas,\" she says. \"So, the shift in vision by [Next Generation] would put kids in more active charge of their learning.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's a chaotic kind of classroom to manage, but it's key, Colson says, to getting more students out of the science boredom rut and saying, \"This is real. It makes sense. It's interesting.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2013 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=To+Make+Science+Real%2C+Kids+Want+More+Fun&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\" alt=\"\">\u003c/div>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "In a new poll, many parents said they're worried that schools aren't adequately preparing students for a changing workforce. And too much emphasis on memorizing facts in the classroom, both parents and kids say, is keeping young people from getting excited about science and technology careers.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_33102\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-large wp-image-33102\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2013/12/photo6_wide-8b69872de7bff65e5cfc1f7a661e4aca2b173743-s40-c85-640x359.jpg\" alt=\"Hands-on science activities like making bubble mitts at the Mission Science Workshop teach students about things like surface tension.\" width=\"640\" height=\"359\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hands-on science activities like making bubble mitts at the Mission Science Workshop teach students about things like surface tension.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Eric Westervelt\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Are American kids\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>being adequately prepared in the sciences to compete in a highly competitive, global high-tech workforce? A majority of American parents say no, \u003ca href=\"http://media.npr.org/documents/2013/dec/rwjf_npr_harvard_edpoll.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">according to a poll by NPR\u003c/a>, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nearly one-quarter of all parents said their child's school today doesn't put enough emphasis on science curricula. And 30 percent of parents with children in kindergarten up through fifth grade say there's too little emphasis on science. \u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We want to see these kids get excited about science and math. We're lagging!\" says\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>Elizabeth Hall, one poll respondent and a mother of two who lives in California's sprawling central valley north of Fresno.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hall says her state has created a culture of testing that has resulted in high rates of teacher burnout and low expectations. Her community, she laments, has made peace with academic mediocrity in the sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>'It's Just Another Class'\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One of Hall's daughters, a high school sophomore, is so frustrated and underwhelmed by her district's biology and chemistry classes that she is reconsidering her once-strong desire to train for a medical career.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"There's no enthusiasm from the teachers. There's no love of science. There's no showing these young people that science is important in their lives. It's just another class,\" Elizabeth Hall says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her daughter, 15-year-old Grace Hall, says there are solutions, in her view: Help show her how science is relevant to her life and future job prospects, she says, and go deeper into how students arrive at answers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Right now, [in] chemistry it seems like, why are we learning this?\" Grace says. It would be a better learning experience, she says, \"if we were almost forced to really \u003cem>understand\u003c/em> instead of just memorizing things ... and [went] more in-depth in knowing why the answer is that answer.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"There's no love of science. There's no showing these young people that science is important in their lives. It's just another class.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>State and federal statistics show that at least one-third of all students entering higher education programs today need some kind of remedial or developmental course work. That fact underscores a worry about a widening science-skills gap that is shared by many parents and educators and some in business and academia.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>International tests show that American students just aren't measuring up, especially in math and science. The recent Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study shows that the \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/2013/12/03/248320179/pisa-tests-results-in-u-s-are-sobering\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. ranks 28th globally in science\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Making room for science, that is a big problem,\" says Mary Colson, an eighth-grade Earth science teacher in Moorhead, Minn. \"In the elementary schools now, the push is often for reading and math minutes. And science and social studies often get left out because there is just not enough time,\" she says. \"That's unfortunate, because often kids can't help themselves but be curious about the natural world.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Getting Kids Psyched For Science\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a recent afternoon in San Francisco, 9-year-olds from Paul Revere Elementary in the Bernal Heights neighborhood are captivated by a large Van de Graaff electrostatic generator — and the prospect of gently zapping a reporter. They implore me to put the metal part of my microphone on the machine — all in the name of science, of course.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's semi-controlled chaos here, but that's the point. This is free-form explore time at the Mission Science Workshop in San Francisco. The program works with low-income and underserved public elementary schools to get kids excited about science. The program does it by mixing lots of hands-on learning with specific experiments that teachers can continue back in their own classrooms. \u003cstrong>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There are a lot of live reptiles, whole animal skeletons and a handful of project stations throughout the room, a large former high school auto shop-turned science lair. Think mad scientist meets Willy Wonka, with limited impulse controls. Fourth-graders Matthew Rivera and Jamal Damon gently tussle over two pythons while teacher Sarah-Jayne Reilly stands by. \u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"I grew up in Ireland and really didn't do science until I was much older,\" Reilly says. \"And when I came here the first time, my mind was like, 'Wow! I just love the way the children are learning to think.' '\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We always tell them, 'Don't just believe me, try it for yourself, test it for yourself. It's OK to be wrong. It's OK to say what you're thinking,' \" she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For teacher Sam Haynor, the science workshop is about using imaginative experimentation to spark learning, and to counter the idea that science is a set of known facts that students should sit back quietly and receive from on high.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"The idea of this place is really to say that it's constructive — that you have to build, you have to try,\" Haynor says. \"You have to experiment and fail and learn again. And that science really is just a quest to learn the truth.\"\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, he explains, maybe it's easier for some kids to learn about math and science by helping to make something that serves a real-world function, like a circuit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Making Time 'For Students To Explore'\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's not all free-form exploration. After the pandemonium subsides, students semi-calmly work to build terrariums as they explore the life cycle of plants.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"When they explore, they're excited. They find things they are interested in,\" says Paul Revere Elementary teacher Jessica Huang, who takes her classes to the workshop regularly. \"They want to go back to school and check out books about things that they've explored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"So I see it as a way of really opening their eyes to things that they didn't know that they would even be interested in,\" she adds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's perhaps the kind of elementary school science program that many parents in NPR's education poll say is missing in their own communities.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Minnesota teacher Mary Colson has helped write a new set of national science standards called \u003ca href=\"http://www.nextgenscience.org\" target=\"_blank\">Next Generation Science Standards\u003c/a>. The standards emphasize getting kids engaged in practicing science, she says, and getting more students to think like scientists.\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Reduce the amount of information, reduce the number of facts that we ask kids to cram into their heads, so that there is time in the school day for students to explore, to try things out and then ... go back and revisit their ideas,\" she says. \"So, the shift in vision by [Next Generation] would put kids in more active charge of their learning.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's a chaotic kind of classroom to manage, but it's key, Colson says, to getting more students out of the science boredom rut and saying, \"This is real. It makes sense. It's interesting.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2013 \u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org\">NPR\u003c/a>.\u003cimg src=\"http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif?utmac=UA-5828686-4&utmdt=To+Make+Science+Real%2C+Kids+Want+More+Fun&utme=8(APIKey)9(MDAxOTAwOTE4MDEyMTkxMDAzNjczZDljZA004)\" alt=\"\">\u003c/div>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Why Academic Teaching Doesn't Help Kids Excel In Life",
"title": "Why Academic Teaching Doesn't Help Kids Excel In Life",
"headTitle": "MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/2872099576_6d354bb62d_z-e1384804912956.jpg\" alt=\"2872099576_6d354bb62d_z\" width=\"640\" height=\"406\" class=\"size-full wp-image-32714\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/2872099576_6d354bb62d_z-e1384804912956.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/2872099576_6d354bb62d_z-e1384804912956-400x254.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/2872099576_6d354bb62d_z-e1384804912956-320x203.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Shelley Wright\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Academics. Most of our current school system revolves around it, and yet, I think it falls miserably short of what our kids need. To be honest, I think our academic system of education is highly overrated, at best. At worst, it destroys a number of our kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hear me out. I’m not saying that our kids shouldn’t learn to read, or do math, or develop other valuable skills. But too often, the focus of our kids’ school day is Content with a capital C, with little connection to why it matters. Instead of learning together, many of our students spend hours filling in worksheets or copying down lecture notes that they could google in 30 seconds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Too often the lectures they listen to are boring and irrelevant to their lives. And from my experience, most of this content is simply memorized, spewed out for an exam and then quickly forgotten. But beyond this, there’s often only one right answer, which frequently cultivates in our students a fear of failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SCHOOLS VALUE HOOP JUMPING\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, kids who we consider “academic” tend to be good hoop jumpers. They’ve figured out the system and can navigate their way through the predictable demands of the system. But they are seldom truly engaged. Rarely are they transformed by their learning. They’re going through the motions.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">I've come to realize that being “academic” doesn't tell you much about yourself. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Research shows that some of the least engaged students are the highest achievers. Think about that. They do well because they know how to “do school.” Is this really the best we have to offer them?\u003cbr>\nWhat if you’re not “academic”? Most of these kids pass through too many years of their young lives feeling like they don’t measure up. Feeling stupid. And for some, it radically alters their trajectory of their adult lives. Unfortunately, too many students have to recover from school once they graduate. Is this really what we want for them?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I USED TO TEACH THIS WAY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In all honesty, I have to admit that I used to believe in this academics-oriented system. For too many years my students sat in straight rows. I asked the questions. I had the answers. I controlled the learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The truth is I did this because it’s what I knew. It’s how I’d been trained. It’s what I saw replicated in universities and in other teachers’ classrooms. I sincerely believed that good grades mattered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m an English teacher, and I subscribed wholeheartedly to the belief that the pinnacle of success in English was the ability to write “the essay.” But I’ve \u003ca href=\"http://plpnetwork.com/2012/06/22/blogging-persuasive-essay/\">radically changed my position\u003c/a>. I’ve come to believe that the traditional essay is one of the most useless things we teach our students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, I’ve started to ask people I know, “Do you ever write an essay?” I’ve never had one person say yes. I wonder how many teachers, except those who are taking university classes (or writing an opinion piece like this), ever write true essays. If I may be so bold, I wonder how many English teachers frequently write essays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m not saying our kids shouldn’t be able to write. On the contrary, I think our students should be able to argue gracefully and persuade powerfully. They also need to know what they believe and why. I simply think the essay is a medium that has outlived its usefulness, at least in high school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ACADEMICS FOR THE ACADEMICIANS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve come to realize that being “academic” doesn’t tell you much about yourself. It tells you you’re good at school, which is fine if you plan to spend your life in academia, but very few of our students do. It doesn’t indicate whether or not you’ll be successful in your marriage, raising your kids, managing your money, or giving back to your community. All things that matter much more than being good at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School should be a place where kids can discover what they love. They should be able to ask the questions that matter to them and pursue the answers. They should discover what they are passionate about, what truly sets their hearts and souls on fire. They should discover they can make a difference now. Above all, they should leave school knowing what they are good at.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, I think most kids graduate only knowing if they’re good at school or not. Often our students have many talents; they just don’t fit in our current curriculum because their talents are likely not considered “real knowledge.” And what is that? In the Biology curriculum that I’ve taught for the past several years, one of the objectives that my students need to know is earthworm reproduction. Really? Out of all the things we could be teaching a 17-year-old about biology, someone (a whole panel of someones, we can guess) decided earthworm reproduction was essential?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>OUR STUDENTS LOSE THEIR CURIOSITY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We are born curious. Babies explore their environments to learn; they do it naturally without being told. Three-year-olds constantly, at times annoyingly, ask, “why?” And yet, by the time my students arrive in Grade 10, they have all but lost their curiosity. Consequently, when I get a new class of students, we start by unlearning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We begin by imagining what school could be, instead of what they’ve known for 10 years. Only then can we move into the work that will help them become lifelong learners who truly enjoy the search for answers, rather than the mark at the top of their exam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently I’ve been reading Amanda Lang’s \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Why-Questions-Success-ebook/dp/B00851M4I2\">The Power of Why\u003c/a>\u003c/em>. In it she states:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\"Curious kids learn how to learn, and how to enjoy it – and that, more than any specific body of knowledge, is what they will need to have in the future. The world is changing so rapidly that by the time a student graduates from university, everything he or she learned may already be headed toward obsolescence. The main thing that students need to know is not what to think but how to think in order to face new challenges and solve new problems.\" (p.14)\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LEARNING HOW TO LEARN AND FAIL AND LEARN SOME MORE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our school system doesn’t need to create kids who are good at school. Instead, we need to create an environment that engages learners, fosters creativity, and puts responsibility for learning where it belongs – with our students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of rote learning, teachers need to use content to teach skills. We need to build environments that allow our students to get messy and build things. Places where students learn how to learn, and know how they learn best. Where students engage in significant research, and learn how to identify credible resources amidst a plethora of information that, at times, may seem overwhelming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Furthermore, our students need to be able to problem-solve, innovate and fail over and over again. Throughout all of this, our kids should be collaborating with each other, as well as virtually with students across the globe. They need to be able to communicate powerfully using the mediums of print, photography and video.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>THREE QUESTIONS TO GUIDE STUDENT-DRIVEN LEARNING\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I’ve worked with my students, we’ve come to realize they need to be able to answer three questions, regardless of what we’re researching:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>What are you going to learn?\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>How are you going to learn it?\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>How are you going to show me you’re learning?\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>How they get to this last question is often their decision. And what they come up with never fails to surprise me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My classroom hasn’t always looked like this. But over the past three years we’ve shifted to a constructivist pedagogy that has transformed not only my thinking, but my students as well. Now we learn in an inquiry, PBL, tech-embedded classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The journey at times has been painful and messy, but well worth the work. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that my students will often exceed my expectations, if only they’re given the chance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This post originally appeared on the \u003ca href=\"http://plpnetwork.com/2013/11/07/obsession-academic-teaching-preparing-kids-life/\">Powerful Learning Practice\u003c/a> blog.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Teacher Shelley Wright explains why a school system that revolves around academics fails to teach kids what they really need to know. Students have many talents; they just don’t fit into set current curriculae because their talents are likely not considered \"real knowledge.\"",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/2872099576_6d354bb62d_z-e1384804912956.jpg\" alt=\"2872099576_6d354bb62d_z\" width=\"640\" height=\"406\" class=\"size-full wp-image-32714\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/2872099576_6d354bb62d_z-e1384804912956.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/2872099576_6d354bb62d_z-e1384804912956-400x254.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2013/11/2872099576_6d354bb62d_z-e1384804912956-320x203.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>By Shelley Wright\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Academics. Most of our current school system revolves around it, and yet, I think it falls miserably short of what our kids need. To be honest, I think our academic system of education is highly overrated, at best. At worst, it destroys a number of our kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hear me out. I’m not saying that our kids shouldn’t learn to read, or do math, or develop other valuable skills. But too often, the focus of our kids’ school day is Content with a capital C, with little connection to why it matters. Instead of learning together, many of our students spend hours filling in worksheets or copying down lecture notes that they could google in 30 seconds.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Too often the lectures they listen to are boring and irrelevant to their lives. And from my experience, most of this content is simply memorized, spewed out for an exam and then quickly forgotten. But beyond this, there’s often only one right answer, which frequently cultivates in our students a fear of failure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>SCHOOLS VALUE HOOP JUMPING\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For the most part, kids who we consider “academic” tend to be good hoop jumpers. They’ve figured out the system and can navigate their way through the predictable demands of the system. But they are seldom truly engaged. Rarely are they transformed by their learning. They’re going through the motions.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">I've come to realize that being “academic” doesn't tell you much about yourself. \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Research shows that some of the least engaged students are the highest achievers. Think about that. They do well because they know how to “do school.” Is this really the best we have to offer them?\u003cbr>\nWhat if you’re not “academic”? Most of these kids pass through too many years of their young lives feeling like they don’t measure up. Feeling stupid. And for some, it radically alters their trajectory of their adult lives. Unfortunately, too many students have to recover from school once they graduate. Is this really what we want for them?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>I USED TO TEACH THIS WAY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In all honesty, I have to admit that I used to believe in this academics-oriented system. For too many years my students sat in straight rows. I asked the questions. I had the answers. I controlled the learning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The truth is I did this because it’s what I knew. It’s how I’d been trained. It’s what I saw replicated in universities and in other teachers’ classrooms. I sincerely believed that good grades mattered.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m an English teacher, and I subscribed wholeheartedly to the belief that the pinnacle of success in English was the ability to write “the essay.” But I’ve \u003ca href=\"http://plpnetwork.com/2012/06/22/blogging-persuasive-essay/\">radically changed my position\u003c/a>. I’ve come to believe that the traditional essay is one of the most useless things we teach our students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently, I’ve started to ask people I know, “Do you ever write an essay?” I’ve never had one person say yes. I wonder how many teachers, except those who are taking university classes (or writing an opinion piece like this), ever write true essays. If I may be so bold, I wonder how many English teachers frequently write essays.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’m not saying our kids shouldn’t be able to write. On the contrary, I think our students should be able to argue gracefully and persuade powerfully. They also need to know what they believe and why. I simply think the essay is a medium that has outlived its usefulness, at least in high school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ACADEMICS FOR THE ACADEMICIANS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I’ve come to realize that being “academic” doesn’t tell you much about yourself. It tells you you’re good at school, which is fine if you plan to spend your life in academia, but very few of our students do. It doesn’t indicate whether or not you’ll be successful in your marriage, raising your kids, managing your money, or giving back to your community. All things that matter much more than being good at school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>School should be a place where kids can discover what they love. They should be able to ask the questions that matter to them and pursue the answers. They should discover what they are passionate about, what truly sets their hearts and souls on fire. They should discover they can make a difference now. Above all, they should leave school knowing what they are good at.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, I think most kids graduate only knowing if they’re good at school or not. Often our students have many talents; they just don’t fit in our current curriculum because their talents are likely not considered “real knowledge.” And what is that? In the Biology curriculum that I’ve taught for the past several years, one of the objectives that my students need to know is earthworm reproduction. Really? Out of all the things we could be teaching a 17-year-old about biology, someone (a whole panel of someones, we can guess) decided earthworm reproduction was essential?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>OUR STUDENTS LOSE THEIR CURIOSITY\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We are born curious. Babies explore their environments to learn; they do it naturally without being told. Three-year-olds constantly, at times annoyingly, ask, “why?” And yet, by the time my students arrive in Grade 10, they have all but lost their curiosity. Consequently, when I get a new class of students, we start by unlearning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We begin by imagining what school could be, instead of what they’ve known for 10 years. Only then can we move into the work that will help them become lifelong learners who truly enjoy the search for answers, rather than the mark at the top of their exam.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recently I’ve been reading Amanda Lang’s \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Why-Questions-Success-ebook/dp/B00851M4I2\">The Power of Why\u003c/a>\u003c/em>. In it she states:\u003c/p>\n\u003cblockquote>\u003cp>\"Curious kids learn how to learn, and how to enjoy it – and that, more than any specific body of knowledge, is what they will need to have in the future. The world is changing so rapidly that by the time a student graduates from university, everything he or she learned may already be headed toward obsolescence. The main thing that students need to know is not what to think but how to think in order to face new challenges and solve new problems.\" (p.14)\u003c/p>\u003c/blockquote>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>LEARNING HOW TO LEARN AND FAIL AND LEARN SOME MORE\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our school system doesn’t need to create kids who are good at school. Instead, we need to create an environment that engages learners, fosters creativity, and puts responsibility for learning where it belongs – with our students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of rote learning, teachers need to use content to teach skills. We need to build environments that allow our students to get messy and build things. Places where students learn how to learn, and know how they learn best. Where students engage in significant research, and learn how to identify credible resources amidst a plethora of information that, at times, may seem overwhelming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Furthermore, our students need to be able to problem-solve, innovate and fail over and over again. Throughout all of this, our kids should be collaborating with each other, as well as virtually with students across the globe. They need to be able to communicate powerfully using the mediums of print, photography and video.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>THREE QUESTIONS TO GUIDE STUDENT-DRIVEN LEARNING\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As I’ve worked with my students, we’ve come to realize they need to be able to answer three questions, regardless of what we’re researching:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>What are you going to learn?\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>How are you going to learn it?\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>How are you going to show me you’re learning?\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>How they get to this last question is often their decision. And what they come up with never fails to surprise me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>My classroom hasn’t always looked like this. But over the past three years we’ve shifted to a constructivist pedagogy that has transformed not only my thinking, but my students as well. Now we learn in an inquiry, PBL, tech-embedded classroom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The journey at times has been painful and messy, but well worth the work. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that my students will often exceed my expectations, if only they’re given the chance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"info": "The Commonwealth Club of California is the nation's oldest and largest public affairs forum. As a non-partisan forum, The Club brings to the public airwaves diverse viewpoints on important topics. The Club's weekly radio broadcast - the oldest in the U.S., dating back to 1924 - is carried across the nation on public radio stations and is now podcasting. Our website archive features audio of our recent programs, as well as selected speeches from our long and distinguished history. This podcast feed is usually updated twice a week and is always un-edited.",
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"order": 9
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"id": "fresh-air",
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"airtime": "SUN 7:30pm-8pm",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"order": 15
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"title": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown",
"tagline": "Lessons from a lifetime in politics",
"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-Political-Mind-of-Jerry-Brown-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 18
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"info": "Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.",
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"marketplace": {
"id": "marketplace",
"title": "Marketplace",
"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"source": "American Public Media"
},
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"masters-of-scale": {
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"title": "Masters of Scale",
"info": "Masters of Scale is an original podcast in which LinkedIn co-founder and Greylock Partner Reid Hoffman sets out to describe and prove theories that explain how great entrepreneurs take their companies from zero to a gazillion in ingenious fashion.",
"airtime": "Every other Wednesday June 12 through October 16 at 8pm (repeats Thursdays at 2am)",
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},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
"title": "MindShift",
"tagline": "A podcast about the future of learning and how we raise our kids",
"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Mindshift-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
"imageAlt": "KQED MindShift: How We Will Learn",
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"meta": {
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"order": 12
},
"link": "/podcasts/mindshift",
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"morning-edition": {
"id": "morning-edition",
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"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"onourwatch": {
"id": "onourwatch",
"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/On-Our-Watch-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 11
},
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"on-the-media": {
"id": "on-the-media",
"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
"id": "pbs-newshour",
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"info": "Analysis, background reports and updates from the PBS NewsHour putting today's news in context.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/PBS-News-Hour-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/pbs-newshour-full-show/id394432287?mt=2",
"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
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},
"perspectives": {
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"order": 14
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"planet-money": {
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
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},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
"subscribe": {
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
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},
"pri-the-world": {
"id": "pri-the-world",
"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 2pm-3pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
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