Note Before the May 6 Session

Here's the rough agenda I was planning for today before my Wednesday schedule got reshuffled.

Emphasis on Work Product

In our first cycle, we titled this session "Running a Journalism-type Classroom." One of our first points of discussion was that this title was a little awkward. This led, in turn, to the catchier "Chaotic Classroom" title.

One thing that quickly came out of the first meeting, however, is that the journalism teachers are miles ahead of the teaching staff when it comes to getting their students to focus on what it takes to develop a meaningful work product. In other words, when students interview each other for an article or podcast, it isn't just about checking off boxes on some grading rubric: It's about telling a story that both you and your peers will respect.

This is a big challenge in math and, from what I've seen in the last week, business classes as well: Projects have a meaningful aim, but they also have a busywork component that many students quickly sniff out. Maybe it's distance between the subject matter being discussed and the student's own experience. I'd like to discuss how to close the gap between journalism and the rest of the school when it comes to getting basic students to show pride in work.

Relating my own teaching experience since the last PD session, I have put my Theory of Knowledge classes through two project cycles. In the first, I had students research and write about general topics related to science: the Scientific Method,  the role of peer review in science, etc. The resulting presentations were kind of lame and uninspiring to grade. It was a good learning experience, but I think I was learning more than the students were.

For the second cycle, I tried to "story" things up a little. I asked the students to pick from a list of revolutionary figures in the history of science and discuss that person's life, focusing on what elements, both personal and historical, made that person revolutionary. For example, students writing on Galileo, were to investigate the historical context (the late Renaissance), the thinking that preceded Galileo (the Copernican heliocentric model), the tools that facilitated Galileo's research (the telescope), not to mention Galileo's personality when it came to defying the scientific and religious authorities of the age.

Long story short, the work came out a lot better and was a lot more fun to grade. For the first time this year, I felt like I had something I'd be happy showing to I.B. parents, not to mention other I.B. teachers.

I think this focus on generating a quality work product over grading individual student performance is a critical mind shift that needs to be discussed in depth. How do we incentivize and broadcast good work, so that students know that they're not just generating something for the teacher's eyes only? Should we be working the Art department into this discussion as well? This is something they deal with on a daily basis as well.

Brainstorming and the d.school Model

My department has been doing teacher-to-teacher intervisitations.  I used this as an opportunity to sit in on Christine's class for a week in Room 341. One thing I quickly noticed is that, once students have taken their seats and logged on to the computers in Room 341, the teacher practically has to shout at the top of her lungs to get the full room's attention.

Journalism teachers might have more experience on how to get the whole group to turn away from the computer screen, but even then, you've got the machines battling you for student attention every second of the lesson.

My advice to Christine after my second visit was to not fight the technology, to let students focus on the computer and communicate via online commenting or direct person-to-person interaction. I watched her do this on the third and fourth day and noticed a big uptick in the productivity level of the room.

Looking back, I think Christine's idea to get a group discussion going in the early stages of the project was a noble one. It just seemed like too much of an uphill battle to be any fun for her or her students. How can we build better discussion into the cycle, especially at the front end when we're really trying to get students to think creatively? We talked about getting students to be thoughtful about their work after the first draft. What about before?

Stanford's Design School (or d.school) runs an interesting series of courses on what they call "Design Thinking," borrowing ideas from the best tech companies. The course puts a heavy focus on the brainstorming process and creativity. I think our students would love this kind of instruction.

This video runs through a full hour-long design cycle class. It's too long for a single PD session, but the first 10 minutes give you a taste of how they get a room full of adults to turn off the devices and thinking about a project from a total blank-slate perspective. I think we can steal a few of these tricks to get the ideas flowing a little more smoothly in our classrooms.

Detecting Signal amid the Noise

As we noted in the very first discussion, there's a difference between good chaos and bad chaos. It also takes a while for a teacher to know that difference.

This came up in my observation of Christine's classes. There were times when her students were on- point, executing and displaying accountable talk and, yet, she couldn't see it or hear it (for various reasons) and therefore wasn't getting the positive feedback she needed to know what was working well for her.

I'm sure the same thing goes on in my classroom. My eyes and ears are trained to seek out the four or five kids blatantly off task instead of the four or five kids doing something mind-blowingly creative. I can't "read" chaos as well as some teachers can, so I tend to play it safe when it comes to lesson planning.

Like I said above, emphasizing collective work product over individual performance seems like a good place to start. It requires both a psychological shift on the part of the teacher and a cultural shift on the part of the entire classroom, though. What should teachers still on the back end of this shift be looking for? I'd like to hear more about what the process looked like for the more experienced teachers as they went through it the first times.

In short, how do rewire our brains to seek out the positive and not worry so much about the negative aspects of increased student independence?