What’s wrong with education?

Everyone has an answer to the question. Here are some I hear regularly, depending on who is answering:

“Teachers are lazy”

“Teachers don’t care”

“Adminstrators don’t understand the realities of the classroom”

“Administrators don’t provide support to struggling teachers”

“District Office Staff are out of touch – they have been out of the classroom too long”

“Educational reform is always top-down”

“Education is underfunded by the government”

Lately I’ve been thinking about this question, and the implications of the various answers. It is easy to blame – it is easy to complain. And I regularly do this. However, in an effort to be productive, I’m going to stop blaming other people, stop looking outward for the problems and solutions, and start looking inward. While sitting in a meeting yesterday, a colleague who is now an administrator (my former cooperating teacher during my internship, actually) commented that while the meeting we were at was all about bringing innovative structures to schools in order to increase student outcomes, the most positve change she feels she ever made as an educator was working in her classroom with her students. How true. How better to have a positive impact in young people’s lives? Be a good teacher. And the only person who can do that, the only person who can control that, is me. So, I’m letting go of the blaming, and doing my best to do my best in my class, everyday, with my students. Nothing could be more powerful and empowering.

Project-based Learning – independent or collaborative?

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about project-based learning, and the potential it holds for transforming the landscape of education. Since Dewey first challenged the methods of scientific curriculum making preferred by Tyler and Bobbitt almost a hundred years ago, scholars have been saying that what we do in schools needs to be relevant to students. Yet it still is not. PBL provides the chance for educators to take content that is prescribed by a provincial government, and place it within a real situation or scenario for the students.

The literature on PBL is limited, and somewhat contradictory – some practitioners claim that student-led inquiry is at the base of all authentic project-based learning. Sometimes in this context it is related directly to Science, and called problem-based learning. Whole schools are based on inquiry or constructivist learning, with varying levels of student direction, such as Zoo School, Avalon School, or New Country School to name just a few. Other call project-based learning Project-Based Service Learning — here, projects may or may not have a basis in inquiry, but the end goal is for students to provide a service to the school, the larger community, or even the global community. PBL also relates to Place-based Learning, another way to describe learning that takes place outside of the school, often as part of providing a service.

Other people who advocate PBL cite the benefits of students working together towards a common product, performance, service, or solution. In my experience with students coming from poverty, this is the ultimate benefit of PBL – the engagement and belonging that comes from working with other students towards an end goal, mattering to these students, and ultimately being depended on by these students. Middle-class students generally already have this sense of belonging in their lives – whether they belong with a sports team, their family, or a club or group outside of school. Our students, however, don’t always have avenues to build these feelings of belonging. If we can build this feeling of belonging at school, then students have a compelling reason to attend.

Another concern I have with student-led inquiry is that our students, especially in grades 9 and 10, don’t really know what they are interested in. They don’t have the life experience to know what is out there – often they have barely left their own neighbourhood. During the Dinner Theatre, we had students who couldn’t tell you two things they liked besides television and video games discover that they loved cooking, or acting, or set-building.

I think that any implementation of PBL would have to carefully combine both independent, student-led inquiry-based projects with structured, teacher-led projects. I see it as a contiuum, with students starting with structured projects where they “Discover Their Passion” to steal a term from Sir Ken Robinson, and moving towards more student-led projects by grades 10/11/12 (or whenever they’re ready for them.) Even within the context of teacher-led projects, there is room for students to have choice. One quick example – we’re looking at running a photo-journalism project later this year. While the form of the project (producing a newspaper and everything that goes along with it) is structured, the actual content of the paper will depend on student interest. However, if a student had never taken a photograph, or written an article for a specific purpose, how would they know they liked to do these things?

So this is where I find myself, on a Saturday morning, homework done for the day but not the weekend, trying to reconcile student-led inquiry with structured large group projects. What a geek.

Am I in Cambodia?

I was confused when carpooling to work this morning – I thought I was living in Cambodia. There were three main reasons:

a) A construction worker was unabashadly peeing on the side of the road just around the corner from our house

b) The car in front of us followed a curve in the road, and signaled to indicate they were turning, even though they had no option but to turn

c) There was just an election that cost common people a ton of money, and meant nothing

If it weren’t for the frigid weather, my nagging cold, and impending winter, I may have been fooled.

A chance…

The city I live in has a public transit system that is under review. As a white, middle-class, car-owning, carpooling member of society, I know very little about it. What I do know I have garnered from conversations with my students. Below are some fictional, though representative, conversations:

Late Student (enters with 7-11 Slurpee): Sorry I’m late.

TeachingChris: What’s up? Sleep in?

Late Student: Yeah, and I missed the 7:40 bus.

TeachingChris: 7:40? But it’s 9:30.

Late Student: I know. It takes me 55 minutes to get here on the bus, and the next one doesn’t come until 8:00, so I decided to walk and save the $2.10.

TeachingChris: Where’s my slurpee?

Though $2.10 isn’t the student fair – it’s the adult fair – a few students have commented to me that they don’t have a student card and don’t want to risk getting hassled by the bus driver when trying to pay the student fare. (The school issues student cards, but they aren’t used for anything school related, and are often misplaced.)

Late Student #2: Hey Teaching.

TeachingChris: It’s 11:30! Where have you been?

Late Student #2: I got a job.

TeachingChris: That’s cool. Where at?

Late Student #2: Superstore. Way up in the North End.

TeachingChris: Do you work late?

Late Student #2: Yeah, until 12, stocking shelves. Now that they’re open until 11, we have to work later.

TeachingChris: That explains the late part.

Late Student #2: No, I would have been on time, but I missed the 12:10 bus and had to walk home. It’s the last one.

TeachingChris: Walk from Superstore? That’s far.

Late Student #2: I didn’t get home until 2:30. So I slept in.

TeachingChris: Yikes. If you talked to your manager, would they let you out a few minutes early to catch the bus?

Late Student #2: I’m going to have to ask.

A lot of our students work, and the bus often stops running before they are done for the day. For example, on Sundays, the busses run from 11 until 6. If you work early or late, be prepared to walk, or take a taxi (which makes working a moot point!)

When an email came out advertising the public consultations about the transit system, I knew this was a chance for to empower the students. I talked with a colleague, and we decided that we would see if our SRC would do a survey of all the students, compile the data, and take it to the meeting. They were happy to do it. There were three meetings scheduled – one in the trendy, near downtown neighbourhood south of the one I teach in, one in the far northwest of the city, and one in the far southeast. We decided to go to the third one, in the southeast, so that we’d have time to get as much data as possible from the students.

All totaled we had around 70 surveys returned, and there were some emerging themes that the students pulled from them. The four interested students who were able to go (the meeting was in the evening) divided the main ideas up, and we headed to the meeting. At the meeting, my colleague briefly introduced the students, explained their process for gathering data, and turned the mic over to the young women. One by one, they outlined their main point, and followed it with an illustrative example. Their concerns were:

-         Safety when waiting for the bus at night

-         The cost

-         The frequency of busses on Sundays, holidays, and late at night

-         The hours busses operate

-         The attitudes of the drivers when trying to bring a stroller, baby, and shopping bags on the bus

The great part of their presentation was that the new plans that were unveiled prior to the students speaking covered almost all of these areas. The students did a great job explaining the point of view, and the moderator was very encouraging and accommodating. We even got a little mention in the newspaper today. Other than our students, there were no other young people, and no First Nations people at the meeting. The women were very proud of what they did, and the hope is that they wouldn’t be afraid to speak up in a public scenario like this again. This morning, the school received the following email:

My daughter and I attended last night’s Transit meeting and I wanted to let you know that the group of students that were in attendance from your school represented their school very well. They were well spoken and raised some very valid points.

Nice!