The Layover

I was helping my parents search for plane tickets this past summer for their trip to Las Vegas.  My mom had asked me to assist them in finding the best price, and I distinctly remember the day I found a ticket for a significant price below what we had been finding.  I called their house and broke the news, only to find that “we went ahead and bought some.  Only one stop, and it is a short one.”

I personally would have chosen the cheaper tickets and stopped twice, or waited an extra few hours, but they had determined that it was worth the extra cash to be free of a long layover. 

Unfortunately, in health class, we don’t have the option of choosing a different flight.  The layover analogy is the best I can come up with to describe our current status.  We have this goal in mind (Las Vegas) of student learning coming in the form of projects that make a difference in society.  But, because of learned habits developed over time (the lack of a direct flight) we’ve had to make a stop along the way in the form of our first project (layover in Dallas), to unlearn ways of thinking that inhibit our ability to be creative and to think in ways that allow students to express their voice, not just restate information. 

Don’t take this all the wrong way.  I am actually excited about this layover to see the progress that we have made.  This layover certainly isn’t like one you’d take on a trip out west, it is a layover that allows students to present their work, evaluate their work, share their work, and ultimately improve on their ability to work going forward. 

I have learned so much as a teacher over the past two weeks.  I have learned that not only do students develop some unfortunate habits during their school years that are hard to break, but I’ve learned that 6 years of teaching can bring on some automatic, almost subconscious responses that must be unlearned as well. 

I, like the students, really want to get to our ultimate destination quickly.  An ultimate destination that has a more streamlined process, with better explanations, better feedback, and better guidance from me as the teacher.  This destination is but a vision in my head, and I cannot wait until we board the plane on our next project to take us even closer to a learning environment that all students take pride in coming to on a daily basis. 

For now, we must enjoy our layover.  The work the students have produced for their second assignment is being posted to our class websites this week.  I am very excited to finally launch the sites and allow students to share their work with whomever they wish.  It is another step in the process that will allow the students to have a vision, like I do, of that final destination.  I am hoping that this project allowed them to have some adversity and some frustrations, because those things will only make our next set of projects better.  If that adversity didn’t show itself this time around, I’m hoping the students set the bar a bit higher next time and try to do something that they have never done before. 

I heard a great quote this week from a fellow educator on twitter:  “If failure isn’t happening in your classroom, why not?”  I think this is great because failure is our best teacher.  Failure also exemplifies a student’s willingness to try something difficult, something new, or something that they thought they’d never get the chance to try in a high school classroom.  

If you’d like to visit our sites please feel free to click the links below.  Projects will continue to be posted throughout the week. 

Thank you for being part of our journey.

Period 3 Health 

Period 9 Health 

Period 10 Health 

Take care,

Coach Mo

Discovering Successes

Change often leads to a certain level of frustration.  As I have communicated in previous posts, the change in culture that I am trying to create has been accompanied by many frustrating realizations and hardships.  What I don’t want to happen throughout this journey is to have all of the successes remain in the classroom while the frustrations are projected to the world.   So, I want to make sure I share successes as they come, just as I do those tough moments. 

Each day in this process I have had a handful of students have an “ah ha” moment.  Whether it was during a one on one meeting, or while collaborating with peers, students are finally starting to grasp the concept of using their creative side to convey a message in a thoughtful and interesting way. 

I have frustrated many students when they’ve told me they want to do a power point or a poster, and I’ve replied with “those are visual aids, not projects” or “isn’t a poster just a re-creation of a website that I could google in less time than it takes me to look at your poster?”  But, I’ve been so proud to see the look of excitement on their faces when they’ve returned to their spaces, thought it over, and have come hurrying to report that they have succeeded in coming up with an idea that is both interesting and informative. 

This week has been wonderful to see students creating these projects with such focus.  I’d share some of the projects, but there are too many great creations happening that I wouldn’t want to single any out.  I had a student today during 9^th period that came in, and before the bell could ring asked “can we go ahead and get started?”   I didn’t hear that once during the first semester, what a cool moment!

I am eager to share these projects with you.  They are due next week and we will be loading them up to our class website.  There are a lot of finishing touches to both the projects and the website construction, and I cannot wait to turn the frustrations that will appear into successes in the coming week. 

Take care,

Coach Mo

"Learned Helplessness"

This week was eye opening and alarming.  My project-based philosophy has hit the first snag of what I am certain to be many difficulties along the way.  My wife defined it best as “learned helplessness” when I explained my dilemma to her. 

What I have discovered is a problem that is out of my control.  I can help the situation (at least I’m giving it my best attempt), but a cure is found only in a shift of culture within the system.  As Dwight Carter (follow him: @Dwight_Carter) stated in his most recent blog post, Culture Matters! (click here to see the post)

What I found this week is that students have developed a learned helplessness.  My hands-off, student-controlled learning process has become almost an overwhelming experience.  Students continue to want directions, step-by-step orders, and a predetermined path.  They want me to “just tell me what to do” because “this is too hard.” 

The “this” that I am speaking of is simply to create a project, of your choice, that conveys a message, of your choice, to an audience, of your choice, using each and every class period to grow as a learner and an advocate. 

Monday’s assignment was to research your family history to seek out a disease, disorder, or condition that has traditionally shown up in your family tree.  The remainder of the week has been seeking out information about that condition, defining an audience that may want to know more about that condition, and developing a product that can present information to that audience in an interesting way.  The one rule was that the project had to be able to be posted to the internet on our class webpage.  I spent most of my week explaining to students that visual aids such as power point and posters aren’t recommended unless they do something with them such as film their presentation, because those alone are just a recreation of a website, and it would be better for us to just send the person to the website.  There are many more fires I tried to put out, but that is one for the sake of the point. 

Back to the theme of learned helplessness.  I approached countless students with blank looks on their faces that were sitting at their desks in a frozen state.  When I asked them how I could help, or what they are doing to further their project, the replies were on par with “I have no idea what to do, I am lost, I like it better when you just tell me and I can do it and turn it in.”  They were expecting me to seek them out, put them back on track, and almost hold their hand every step of the way.

This is a learning process for me as well.  I feel well equipped to assist a student, to help them learn more about a topic, to improve upon their ideas, but by the end of the week, I felt like I was doing 30 projects per class, not helping to guide 30 projects per class. 

In the past I would get frustrated at this point and revert to old strategies of lecturing, worksheets, bookwork, and sprinkled in group activities.  But, that would lump me right in with the “learned helplessness” crowd that gives up and goes right back to the same old things that are out of date and less effective, but are easier.

My challenge to my students is to rise above these habits and take pride in the learning process.  Get rid of this learned helplessness by taking on your difficulties and attempting to solve them without the help of a step-by-step set of directions.  Learn to fail during this process, and then get right back up and fix it.  Learn to take initiative, to dream big, and ultimately learn how to learn because in the real world there won’t be that safety net that comes over to your desk to encourage you to get back to work. 

My challenge to myself is to learn how to assist my students so that I am not doing the project for them, but I am providing better assistance so that they do not lose hope.  To learn how to provide a better vision of my expectations, so that students don’t feel overwhelmed or unprepared.  And finally to identify the times when I need to take a deep breath, recognize that the helplessness has opened up the opportunity for a teachable moment, and I need to capitalize, not out of frustration, but out of joy for an opportunity to make a difference. 

My final challenge is to the entire educational system.  This scenario is not entirely the student’s fault, nor is it the teacher’s fault.  Our school systems train our students to think in one way- the way that satisfies the teacher’s guidelines or standards, not in a way that allows them to learn more and to improve.  We need to keep in mind that we are preparing our students to become our future, not to be able to repeat the strategies of the past. 

Our world is changing so rapidly that we do not know the world these students will enter when they leave us.  Our students need to be equipped with the ability to learn, adapt, and push forward, not to merely meet the requirements of today. 

Take care,

Coach Mo