B.A. Social Studies
For the past two years, I have opened my room every morning at school at 7:30 with the purpose of creating a place for my students to work and have open access to me as a resource and offer an opportunity to get clarification or to discuss topics in class or outside of class. Friday morning, I did the same, and gave it the title, “Coffee Hour with Mr. Anton” with the intent of it becoming a question and answer session about the test that they had later on in the day… Here’s the issue: NONE of them attended. I had a brief discussion with one student in the hall about the material, but that was the only student that showed up to take advantage of the opportunity to make any sort of effort to improve their chances of success.
So, I asked myself: “What could I have done differently to get students to attend?”
As a result, these are the questions that I have for my peers, and for my students:
I think that we can all agree that student motivation is a major issue in education today, and I would argue that this generation of students will not meet their potential unless something changes. Obviously, the way that we do things is not working in regard to teaching the value of effort. I would also argue, because of discussion with work supervisors and articles that I have read, that these students do not have the skills as employees when they enter the work environment or higher education. The college educators that I communicate with also feel that students generally are not as prepared as they used to be with the skills to be successful. For the sake of our students’ future success, how do we change this? Here are my thoughts: #1: Teaching students the value of learning and education: Somewhere along the line, the opportunity of being provided with a public education has lost its value. The primary purpose of the education system is for students to learn content and be prepared with the skills necessary to be successful when they enter the work environment and be conscientious citizens at the local, national, and global levels. The fact that most students only do the work to achieve a certain grade is the main issue here. In general, students lack the intrinsic motivation for taking advantage of the opportunity to meet their potential because they will work to achieve whatever is “good enough.” So much can be said of the ideas of “grit” and “growth mindset.” Teaching students the value of exceeding expectations should be one of our focuses. I think that we need to focus as educators on the process of creating, and not so much on the end product. The fact that we are beginning to look at the value of grades is a start. I still have mixed feelings about this topic, but I definitely agree with the fact that we need to restructure the way that grading is done. We should focus on personalized and individual growth, but measurement and comparison of students is not necessarily a negative thing in my opinion. After their education careers are over, students will be measured and compared with their peers and be in direct competition with them in the workplace for jobs, promotions, and pay raises. Our focus on grades needs to change though whether it is by determining what they actually measure, or by getting rid of them and going to a standards-based, proficiency approach. The purpose and value of school needs to be a primary focus from the beginning of our students’ educational experience in order to get them to buy in throughout. #2: Teaching students to “never settle:” We need to focus on teaching students the, “get a little better every day” mantra. How do we do this? I think that we are taking a step in the right direction by creating student-centered classrooms with real-world implications and applications. We need to focus on teaching students to reflect on their learning in order to achieve intrinsic motivation, not on the extrinsic motivation of receiving whatever grade is the minimum in their eyes, their parents’ eyes, or the school system’s eyes. This is where it all gets muddled. What is the best way to achieve this in our classrooms and in the education system as a whole? As teachers, we all have students that are on the brink of failing multiple courses and have struggled throughout the entirety of the their education as well as those students that have excelled in all circumstances. By focusing on teaching the growth mindset in our classrooms through modeling, application to our lessons, and discussion, we can do all of our students a service that they will hopefully be able to apply to their futures, whether they are the at-risk student, the “average” one, or the the gifted one. Teaching students to strive to get better may not be the answer to all of our motivational issues, but I think it could have the largest impact in the long-term for their success and the improvement of our education system as a whole. #3: Teaching students “what it takes:” Finally, we all have those students that have plans for their future that don’t mesh with what they are achieving currently in school. For example, the “C” student that plans on going to med school, the “barely passing” student who plans to go on to a four-year college, or the “I get A’s without studying but plan on being really successful at the next level” student. In many cases, we are doing a disservice to our students by allowing them to believe that they can achieve their goals by doing the status quo. To be clear, I am not saying to limit goal setting. I am a "hard to achieve" goal setter in most circumstances. The issue that I have is that we typically encourage setting goals, but forget to discuss the most important part: what it takes to achieve them. When I left for college, I had the same experience. I failed because I had set a goal, but was not prepared (on my own account) for accomplishing that goal. I had breezed through high school and had settled with meeting expectations, but not wanting to get better. I did not learn what it takes to get to where I wanted to be. That is a key disconnect, and if we can make those connections with our students, I think that we can see them make strides in regard to motivation. In conclusion, implementing these ideas and combating student apathy are easier said than done, but we have to address this somehow and we have to start somewhere. We are raising a generation of students that are struggling when they enter the real world because they have not learned or been taught the value in the process of learning, hard work and sacrifice. The key is to teach that the status quo is not enough, and effort can make up for many of the issues that they are facing after leaving school. Before reading, note that this post contains thoughts that are both rational and emotional...
As I write this, I’m watching news coverage on the most recent terror attacks on Paris… I would like to be candid in my views, but will be reserved because I know that as a public educator, I cannot portray my personal opinions and thoughts on government policy in a public forum. For that reason I will write tonight from the perspective of all of those educators who are charged with answering the questions regarding these events on Monday morning. Events like this, where innocent lives are lost, are the ones that are most intriguing to our students and offer the greatest opportunity to learn and discuss the topics of terrorism, national security, and foreign relations. Unfortunately, acts of terrorism have become all too common and are an issue that we will have to deal with regularly both as citizens of a global community and as educators who have the responsibility of providing perspective to our students when events like this take place. I argue that we should have meaningful discussion in response to the events that have taken place tonight. Although I cannot comment on my feelings regarding how we should deal with terrorism and terrorist organizations, it’s our responsibility as educators to be knowledgeable about the situations and events that are taking place worldwide that will affect this generation of students. Our responsibility as educators is to be able to provide information that promotes the ideals of the United States while respecting individual thoughts and beliefs. It is unbelievably difficult to keep the pendulum from swinging one way or another. As educators, how do we promote rational thought in these emotionally charged situations? My answer to this question: We don’t… Instead, we should offer answers that are both rationally and emotionally charged… If we truly believe that our way of life is the best way, then moments like this need to be portrayed, not as just something that is taking place overseas, but as something that is a direct threat to all of us as Americans and our values. I argue that times like this are the times that we should be emotionally charged in our classrooms to discuss American ideals… These are the times that we should be asking the “tough” questions to our students. What does it mean to be American? What role should the United States have in foreign relations? What is the United States’ role regarding terrorism overseas? Questions like these are the ones that have an impact on the future, and are the ones that will be most relevant to our students when they leave school. I am not advocating that we promote a feeling or belief one way or another, but it is up to us to inform this generation of students of the world that they are entering and provide a forum for this discussion. This world is not a world of peace, and as Americans, we need to be vigilant. One of our key roles as educators is to promote and teach our students this vigilance. Instead of teaching students to question the system that we have in the United States, I argue that we need to be focusing on and teaching them that the ideals of the United States are superior to terrorist organizations and the governments that support them. When watching any news channel or evening news show (from Fox News, to CNN, to MSNBC), one topic that is consistently discussed deals with the issue of these organizations recruiting United States citizens. I feel that we need to be honest as educators and be promoters of our system as a whole. We should be calling for and teaching our students responsible and informed citizenship. There is no better time to promote our ideals than in times like these. There should be no room for terror, but only the discussion in our classrooms of the use of those tactics as a threat to our ideals. There should be candid, honest discussion and dialogue with our students regarding events like the ones that happened this evening in Paris. This is the best way to defeat terrorism in the long run. We should not avoid these discussions, but should embrace and encourage them. As a history and government teacher, I understand the concept of sociological imagination and teach the value of perspective when studying history, government, and society. In my contemporary issues course, we focus on and debate the balance of civil liberties with the prevention of terrorism in the Post-9/11 Era. Students study multiple perspectives and are asked the difficult questions: Should racial profiling be used to narrow the field of terrorist suspects? Should torture be used to gain information regarding potential acts of terror? Should preventative detention be used as a method of preventing terror attacks? Should the government be allowed to take personal communication data in the name of national security? Although, this course is an elective, I would argue that it is the most relevant one that students are offered in our district because these debates are the same ones that are taking place between our political parties and are directing the policies of our government. The questions being debated here are the ones that are going to dictate future government policy. It is integral for our students to understand all perspectives of these debates and to have reasonable rationale for their perspectives on these topics. In cases like the ones that we face tonight, there are only two perspectives: one that is correct and one that is incorrect. Taking innocent lives is incorrect, no matter the perspective. As educators, our job is to promote only the correct. I encourage you to have meaningful dialogue with your students regarding these events when we arrive at school on Monday. Meaningful discussion is the basis for democratic society and is the purpose and original intent of the right to free speech. Encourage that discussion in order to prevent others from justifying acts like those that happened tonight in Paris, France. After planning for weeks regarding scope and sequence for my government course with the focus on the Project Based Learning (PBL) model, it was time to execute my plan of action. I had the basic course plan in place, but still had to iron out the details for the first unit, “The Principles and Origins of American Government.” I had outlined the essential question and determined that I would put together a panel of local community leaders to provide an authentic audience to evaluate their findings, so the basic layout for the project was there. Now it was time to plan for the most challenging part for me: letting the students go and allowing them to take control of their own learning. I think this the most significant challenge for most teachers who take on the task of creating a student-centered classroom. I would argue that my classes were more student-centered than most in my district coming into this year. I used the flipped classroom model over the previous two years and feel that I was successful implementing that it, but wanted to take a stab at something different to see what it could do for the learning environment in my classroom.
By being open with them from day one that I was trying something new and by outlining the fact that I had high and clear expectations for their work, my students stepped up and learned what was expected plus, in many cases, more content than I would have provided them with in a teacher-centered, traditional classroom. The most significant factor that got students to buy in was providing them with choice in how they showed what they learned through research and a voice for presenting that material to an authentic audience. Pressure was added (for myself and my students) as I began getting RSVP’s from those who were going to participate on the interview panel. The students got nervous, but I think that forced them to step up. The fact that they were being provided with the opportunity to earn their grades from an outside source didn’t give them the option of turning in subpar work to only their teacher. My expectations in turn became my students’ expectations. For my students to be successful, I had to focus on teaching them the process for self-guided learning. On the first day of the unit, students chose their groups for the project and were provided with the essential question. They participated in an exercise (in the Know-Want to Know-Learned or “KWL” format) where they were expected to list what they knew in regard to that question and what they needed to know in order to answer it completely. All questions were put into their group notepad (which they were provided with by myself) and after a designated amount of time, each group presented their questions to the class where they were ALL written down, word for word, for the class to work off of. They were displayed throughout the project on the board for students to reference if they ran into a roadblock in their research while providing them with a voice in the process. I built and created a set of research questions for students to focus on from their list to guide them through their research. The next challenge was providing students with the guidelines and teaching them how to accomplish research and learning over a longer period of time than they are typically accustomed to. In order to answer each research question, students had to relearn the process of using Internet search tools properly while finding resources that helped them to understand the content. Instead of being provided with resources, students could use whatever worked best for them. Over time, I instituted the rule that students could not ask me “Googleable” questions. Instead, they had to provide me with an answer to their question for me to guide them to another one. This created an atmosphere of “sustained inquiry,” one of the key elements in the PBL model (Buck Institute for Education). Students never completely answered their research questions, because each answer they found led to another question that they could use to better understand the content that they were expected to present in their end-product. Collaborative Inquiry--What Do We Need to Know?" Activity Next, students were provided with structure throughout the process with a set of tasks that they had to complete over a designated period of time. Students struggle, as most of us do, with time management and procrastination. The key to teaching students to use the time provided is to provide them with regular deadlines. Throughout each day, I provided time for students to accomplish a task in a given amount of time before having another task added on. Note that I did not grade students based on whether they achieved that task, but added another one at that point. This was done with the purpose of allowing students to pursue content that they may have spent more time researching because they took an interest in it, or found multiple resources that they needed to search through. Because the groups were assigned with each task, members could delegate the work however they pleased, again providing them with freedom in choosing how to accomplish the tasks at the end. The general purpose of the tasks are to provide students with structure that allows them to see how the research process is done. It provides a framework, but not the exact process for accomplishing each task--that was left to the students and their groups to determine on their own, providing another opportunity to incorporate student choice into the process.
Throughout the research phase of the project, I also wanted to be sure to establish and support the fact that the end-goal was for students to learn the material, not simply to create a project for a grade. One of our key battles as teachers is getting students to understand that the purpose of education is to learn the content and skills, not to only attain a certain grade. In general, grades should measure the content and skills that students have learned, not simply whether they can jump through the hoops. In order for students to understand the value of learning and research, I kept the details of the final product and assignment away from them. They knew that they were doing the research in order to create something, but they did not know the direction that they would be expected go with it until they were adequately prepared with the content to be successful. The only grades put in the gradebook at this stage were for simple record keeping tasks and for self-reflection assignments (again, using KWL format). The focus on the process of research and the motivation to learn from that process allowed the projects to meet and exceed the expectations outlined to students in the end. Looking back on my first experience putting Project Based Learning into action, I found a number of challenges listed over the last two blog posts both during the planning and execution phases. Reflecting on the first project, there are very few things that I will do differently next semester, because I feel that my students were successful in learning the material at a higher level than they have in the past. Through this process, students have proven that they can answer the essential questions in essay format and prove depth of knowledge better than they would have been able to in previous semesters. Until this point, I was not confident enough in my students’ learning ability to evaluate them on an essay test, because I don’t think they learned enough through the process to be successful. Project Based Learning has changed this perspective, and my students have performed at a high level on essay tests in general. All in all, my first experience with Project Based Learning has been a positive one where I have encountered major challenges, but my students have risen to the occasion, in most cases exceeding expectations on their evaluations from outside evaluators as well as through traditional objective and subjective assessments. The data that I have gathered has proven that it is successful and I would encourage other teachers to look at PBL as a method to incorporate into our classrooms. It’s not the only way to do it, but is an option in terms of providing a student-centered, individualized learning environment. Be sure to take a look at the data and project examples that I have collected over the coming weeks in future posts and on the “Project Based Learning” page on this website. As always, please comment or question anything here. Any feedback or questions are appreciated. I would enjoy hearing other experiences from teachers who have incorporated Project Based Learning or another student-centered method for their classrooms. What has worked best for you and what challenges have you encountered? |
AuthorBrian Anton currently serves the Purdy R-II (Missouri) School District as the 7-12 Principal after working in the PK-12 Assistant Principal and Athletic Director roles for two years. In the 12 years prior to moving into administration, he served as an award-winning high school social studies teacher. Archives
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