I came into this class with a relatively narrow idea of what project based learning is, or could be, mainly from looking through the scope of the PBL projects carried out by the CTE courses found at my school. I always struggled to understand how the PBL that was being done in these shops, kitchens etc could carry over to a core curriculum class. Having the opportunity to explore resources and have conversations about PBL within the realm of core classes was able to open up more to the idea of pursuing PBL lessons in my own classroom. I have been contemplating and brainstorming on PBL lesson ideas since I started working at a PBL school, but this PBL project was great in giving me a push to turn thoughts into action.
I plan on fully implementing my PBL project and having it as a semester long project reoccurring each year. It will grow a bit more between what I am proposing for our final project and what will be carried out. In my PBL lesson for this class I focused on what I can do for science but eventually I would like to fill it out to include standards from other classes as well. I also expect change within the project each time it’s done as I can reflect, get feedback from students and try to keep focus on relevant and local content. There are two obstacles that I foresee popping up during the implementation of my PBL lesson plan. The first obstacle is time and it is one that has been keeping me from transitioning to PBL from the beginning. As we have learned at TCSJ any “new” style of lesson plan that has proved to be effective, such as UDL, PBL or Inquiry based, takes more time and effort to create and implement. With our school’s shift to independent study I spend significantly more time as an advisor and a case manager than I do as a science teacher. I am worried that starting to spend more time working on science lesson plans will keep me from being successful in my other two roles. In addition, I only see my students for 90 minutes a week and I am worried that this will keep me from properly implementing my vision for this project. The second obstacle I foresee is student interest. While I am hoping that giving freedom for students to pick their own topic and activity to pursue, at the end of the day if I can’t convince them to care enough to want to make a change themselves then I worry it will not be an authentic learning experience and become just busy work. I do not have answers for these obstacles yet, but I plan on leaning on a few of my colleagues, lead teacher and TCSJ mentor for support in coming up with some ideas to overcome these obstacles. I plan on implementing my project January 2021 so I have much to figure out between now and then, but I am feeling, mostly, optimistic about taking on my first true PBL lesson. Preparing for the worst, hoping for the best.
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Overall, I believe learning in the 21st century has changed, for the better, since I was in school. I remember most of my classes being typical sit and get lectures followed by textbook reading and book or worksheet questions for the remaining classwork or homework. If done in class this was usually alone and in silence. While this was how I remember the majority of my classes there were some classes that were different, utilizing group discussions, projects, options etc, but the same goes for now, while I have been fortunate to observe many classes that are utilizing great UDL, PBL and other emerging styles of teaching, I have also seen classes still being taught in the old fashion of teaching that myself and generations before me experienced.
I am fortunate to be a member of a school that values preparing students for future readiness, we facilitate, job shadowing, internships, student portfolios, mock interviews and numerous other strategies to help develop real life skills that will benefit all students upon completion of high school. I believe there is no replacement for just doing something, giving the students the freedom and support to pursue their interests in real life settings is a valuable experience that does wonders for preparing students for the future. While I still had ample room for improvement, I feel like I was starting to really focus my teaching style and lesson plans to encompass all four 21st century skills. The switch to virtual learning has provided a huge challenge for me as a teacher to continue to include these skills. I consider myself proficient enough with technology to adapt to these online changes, but I feel I lack the creativity to make new and engaging ways to present these skills in a virtual classroom. Creating my PBL lesson in this course with the time and support needed to focus on including the 4 C’s will be a beneficial learning experience as a new teacher. I will have to agree with the article that this, to many teachers, and including myself can be perceived as quite scary. In my short time as a teacher so far, I have been fortunate to learn through conversations with colleagues, science conferences and of course classes here at TCSJ great innovative teaching strategies that challenge the old way of doing things. Whether its UDL, building relationships with students or adopting new assessment strategies, as seen in this article, the reaction is the same for me. It is very clear to me that these are better ways to teach students, though I often feel too overwhelmed to follow through with all these things that I am agreeing with. There are a million excuses why not to do it and I have used them all, I don’t have time, I don’t have the energy right now, the year has already started, I will do it next year, this wouldn’t work for the type of students I have, and the list goes on. As a new teacher trying to figure this all out, it is just too easy to fall back on these old, ineffective, ways of teaching to save you some time and energy. It seems that anything worth doing in this career takes a significantly larger amount of time and energy than the way you shouldn’t do it. I would like to add that this article seems to understand that predicament for teachers quite well, I liked how they acknowledged this and encouraged teachers to make this transition slowly, we saw the same advice given when reading about UDL implementation in our UDL Now class reading.
I would confess that for all that I have learned as a student of teaching, I am dissatisfied with how little I have attempted to implement these strategies in my everyday teaching. There were some pleasant moments of validation for some teaching strategies that I have been working on with my support supervisor this past year. Upon his suggestion we focused on my ability to ask questions and have the patience to see them through until I received answers from the class. With his help this became a skill that I improved on greatly, much of his advice and feedback were spot on with what I was reading in this article. Before I worked on that skill, that silence after a question was unbearable for me, now I have learned to live in that moment, embrace it, be patient and let the students digest what you have asked them. In the beginning it was tough, the students new from earlier lessons that they could wait me out and I would move on, once it became clear that I was not going to move on the students started answering at first just out of frustration to end the “awkward” silence, but with time, and higher expectations for responses, the quality of answers improved. One point that was brought up in the article that I have often grappled with is the strategy of not raising hands. I like the informality that comes with it and I do agree with the article that you can get much more natural class discussions this way. I have and continue to use this strategy but often go back and forth between hands and no hands. My concern with no hands is that certain students tend to dominate conversations and responses while others who don’t want to compete for talking time or feel comfortable just jumping into a conversation without permission or even purposely avoid class discussion for different reasons will not get a chance to contribute. I have played around with a few strategies trying to involve everyone such as requiring at least one input per class at their chosen time or half way through the class switching to “lets hear from somebody who hasn’t spoken yet” but I am not sure what is the best strategy for including all class members. This article has help me identify some strategies that I would like to incorporate into my teaching and I will take the advice of the article and choose one to go with for now, I will continue this conversation with my support supervisor and ask him for help implementing this into my lessons. I have not decided which yet, but the places I need most improvement are thinking about the questions I am asking, giving opportunities for peer or self-reflection/grading and having students engage with teacher feedback which may possibly need a reevaluation of my grading techniques. So much good stuff in this article!
My first take away from this summary was how pleased I was that it was not trying to over simplify how people learn, the complexity of this topic was well represented with the author continually driving home the point that there is no one way, quick fix, single approach to discover and implement better practices to align with not just the uniqueness of each individual learner, but also in relation to the current generations. Up until my recent enrollment in TCSJ, the overwhelming majority of my education was the standard sit and get, worksheet heavy, memorize and regurgitate style. This was very challenging for me as it did not represent how I learn best. The exception of this came in my later years during my higher level bio classes which were paired by hands on labs. No surprise that being a hands on and visual learner, I excelled in these classes, mainly due to the fact that I enjoyed them and had genuine interest. I am thrilled to see that new generations of teachers are being taught a different style of teaching that encourages student choice, reflection, problem solving heavy approach that sees the teacher more as a facilitator of the class and less like an instructor. As mentioned in the article, technology opens up countless opportunities for change in education and an example of that is teachers no longer being the sacred holders of knowledge, information is overly abundant and easily accessible to current generations, and teaching has started adapting to this change. The section of the summary that caught my attention most was the "Types and Processes of Learning". I have heard teacher opinions challenge the effectiveness of grade levels and age specific learning during my time as a student of education and the idea that factors that relevant to learning are at play even before the birth of an individual really made me think back to these discussions with a new perspective. As a high school teacher I cant help but think about all the influences, both positive and negative, that my students have experienced before reaching me. While those factors certainly do play a role in learning, it is much easier to observe how current changes in context and cultural influences can have such a profound impact on a student. Even as a new teacher I have already seen this happen multiple times, a very successful student undergoes a life change and their ability to learn, their interest in learning and their focus just tanks. I quickly realized that the "magnitude" of the problem didn't matter as much as how that individual was at dealing with adversity, also a skill shaped by earlier life experiences. While I have explored many of the concepts of the article here at TCSJ, the school that I teach at has exposed me to much more. I feel lucky that I work at a school that is set up to truly engage each individual learner in the manner that best suits how they learn. Big changes in our school are allowing us even more space and tools to improve on this, and while this change is all very new and slightly scary to me, I am really trying, as the summary stated, to use conscious effort to not allow prior knowledge to lead to bias and not rely on existing schema to solve new problems. Also, intrinsic motivation, sooooo important!! |
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