From time to time, I receive questions about Project/Problem Based Learning implementation as teachers take their first tentative steps into a project, or even as this teacher has, gone full-time PBL in all of her classes! Kudos to this bold educator!

Question:
Is there an advantage or is it appropriate in PBL for me to research and share info?  One of the students and I were talking about the Olympic flame and whether it “never goes out.”  Neither of us had the definite answer but it was a topic that I wanted answered for myself but the answer was not vital to the project.  My inclination is that I should research and share – to model enthusiasm for learning.  Or is that something I should just have encouraged her to research and keep the info to myself? I’m not sure that I’m understanding PBL as well as I thought.


Answer: There are many flavors to PBL, so I always default to enthusiasm and Learning. So if you feel that you need to dig in and work alongside a kid, do it! I have. A lot. Doing so role models curiosity and, as you said, enthusiasm. Tell her you don’t know and that you’re going to look stuff up, too, and you’re looking forward to hearing what she has found. . If, once you get your heads back together, she has brought info back from your independent searches, you can feel confident to share the info you found freely, comparing notes, and giving TONS of high-fives and love. Such an awesome scenario!Be sure to have her share her info before you share yours. This will give you some options in case she hasn’t brought any research back. If she has found nothing and you’re guessing it was perhaps due to a lack of effort, then you can tell her that you’ve buried a lie or untruth in your information and she needs to find that lie or risk putting out some bad info.  Plan the lie in advance in case you might need it.Or instead of a lie, or if you think that she has put effort in and simply wasn’t able to find the right places to look, drop her some good links to look at–ones that you know have the answers. Or hand her a book with a few encouraging words.In this way, she can still have success through her own effort and you’re still  providing high-quality, student-centered learning by scaffolding and role modeling growth!

A mantra of mine comes from Dr. Sylvia Rimm: The surest path to high self-esteem is to be successful at something one perceived would be difficult. Each time we steal a student’s struggle, we rob them of an opportunity to build higher self-esteem. Students must experience success with difficult tasks to feel capable and competent.

The takeaway:
Kids who aren’t experienced being learners sometimes need a little extra love and support figuring out how to shift away from the role of Student (being told what-to, when-to, how-to) to the role of Learner (knowing how to suss out answers). And some kids who are great learners, but who have hit a sticking point in their work, might just need a little help getting unstuck.

Knowing how to balance it all is the (he)art of teaching.

Gonna say it now. This post isn’t for everyone. It’s a rough-thought process. Some will be confused by even what the heck I’m talking about. If you find yourself confused, move on. I’m just telling you now, we’re creeping out on an educational limb here. Rough thoughts, looking into the fog, whatever you want to call it.

I want my kids to be creating all sorts of things. Things that are new…but not only that. I want  something more for them. The inventor/tinkerer-mindset is important, but once we have shifted from traditional lessons to differentiated instruction, to inquiry based learning, to project based learning, to problem based learning to inventing/tinkering, then what? Maybe instead of “what,” we might ask why? Why are we making those shifts to differentiated instruction? To PBL? To tinkering?

I think it’s because we’re looking to create independent thinkers, learners, and doers. And that is great! It’s what I’ve devoted the last decade+ of my life to. But I wonder…Can we also consider an entrepreneurial-mindset? What if we did? Seems to me that we have a couple entry gates here: 1) Those who’ll be motivated to create by the idea of making money? By creating to be able to choose their work, their way to spend their lives — basically by having autonomy in their lives. Right? That’s why they’ll make stuff? But not all are motivated that way.

We have 2) those who’ll love to create and tinker for the fun of it. But they only tinker and play in their spare time because they never saw a need to DO something different to make that a main focus of their life’s work. They’re working their day jobs, but LOVE their tinkering. So they might need a little encouragement to consider what can be done to better the world with their play/work… To develop an entrepreneurial-mindset to be motivated to do something.

You see, I think — and again, this is rough thinking in draft form based a LOT on my conversations with Kevin Honeycutt — although it might also include starting businesses, an entrepreneurial-mindset is actually something more: It requires a “nextpert” type of visioning to be able see what’s coming. Helping people to see “a piece of something in my mind/hand, when combined with something in your mind/hand makes something spectacular!” A nextpert is always on the lookout for what’s next in their quest for making that thing they’re doing, better! It’s more than just playing and tinkering, although those are great places to start. Gotta breakout somewhere.

But why? Why tinker? Because it creates conditions to develop people who can DO things differently in the world.

This is about 3-4 leaps ahead of the traditional-classroom approach. I’m still working up a visual in my mind to convey the point more clearly. I want to consider all forms, all versions, all studios of “make” to include making dance. Making music. Making food. Making clothes. Making furniture. Making robots. Making code. Making people think differently. Doing differently. Making a difference with your stuff. Making…making…making…Making a living.

What’s your take? Where am I missing a point? An idea? What do you have in your hand, that when combined with what I have in my hand, makes us each better at what we do?

I’m just sharing my thought process. Sometime soon I’ll come up with a smart model to try out with kids and other learners.

In a recent post, I mentioned how, despite my teacher licensure stating so, I’m really not a true expert in any sense of the word in anything other than teaching and learning. Expert Teacher? Expert in what, exactly?

Yet, because I do a lot of work in helping teachers and administrators figure out how to do better teaching and learning in their schools and classrooms, I’m often asked to give advice and on-the-spot examples for how to improve the engagement and authentic work (PBL) in variety of classes. I’ve been quizzed this way for social studies (whew, I can do that), to Algebra II (getting rougher there), to Woodshop (seriously, I’ve been asked that–more than once) to world languages.

Yes, world languages.Totally outside my realm of expertise, experience, and often, comprehension.

First off, I’m American. Always have been. Most days, I’m fairly fluent when speaking several dialects of my one language, American English. I can, at times, default to a few sentences in Spanish, where my reading is MUCH better than my speaking. And I can pick out a few key words/phrases in about 5 other languages well enough to become a sure-thing 1st victim in a Hostel movie.

What is true is that I’m probably the last person to give any sort of advice on the details of learning a world language. However, I’ve been asked this question many times. So I fall back on what I know…how to learn.

How do people usually learn languages if they’re not in a classroom or sitting at a Rosetta Stone-enabled computer? I’m assuming it’s happened a couple of times through history, right? I’m guessing they learn by doing. They learn by experiencing. And they learn a lot by wanting, nay, by needing to know how to communicate. When put into a nice, non-panicked level of need and provided even the most rudimentary of resources, people often learn quickly the words and phrases they need to be able to communicate.

(Incidentally, I believe that too much panic and people’s brains will shut down instead of working hard to figure out the communication, so we might need to have more “want to” type of pull-learning than “omigosh I’m gonna die” type of push-learning environment)

So that quick learning gets them through that moment. But that’s not ingrained learning. We need something more.

I believe that in every world language course, we might put down the grammar book and the conjugation charts and instead, drop challenges that are fun, medium-level stakes, and do not require memorized scripts.
“Hola, señorita. Como esta? Muy bien. Y tu? Donde esta la biblioteca?” Yep. Memorized script, from nearly 25 years ago. Pretty much 100% useless in my work with Spanish-speakers and 500% useless with Chinese speakers, I found out recently.

So what should we do? All I can say is that I think Richland School District Two’s (South Carolina) world language program is on the right path. They are using a tool called Operation LAPIS for their Latin classes. From the LAPIS website:

Operation LAPIS is a two-year game-based (practomimetic) introductory course in the Latin language and in Roman culture. It may be employed on its own, or as a supplement to other materials; programs and teachers may experiment with it as a supplement and then easily transition to using Operation LAPIS in place of a traditional textbook.

What I noticed on this teacher’s blog post is that they’re no longer guided by the textbook (which isn’t curriculum anyway) and that her kids are actually busy using the language to communicate. Win!

Yes. Game-based challenges are interesting to kids. Heck, challenges are interesting to kids. Truth. And it’s also truth software costs money that most of us don’t have. It’s good if you can get it. But if you can’t, I don’t think you’re out of lives. (lives = luck You see, “lives” is a gaming-joke. See what I did there?)

If I was in charge of a world languages revamp, I have 3 big ideas we start with.

1. We might start with one challenge per semester (or one per quarter, if it’s a semester-long class). We’d awaken our creativity, consider the locations that use this language, consider the current events and culture of that location, and create a real-to-life challenge the kids would have to solve. It would take about 3 hours to complete. It can be related to holidays, sure. It can be related to war or strife where lives are at stake. If we can toss in challenge for a Skype or Google Hangout with someone from that location, so much the better!
2. Maybe the first time, we create the challenge for the students to solve. But there’s only so much energy we can spend revamping a class! So then maybe once the kids have some practice with our challenge, the next time, our students split up and create challenges (and example solutions) for other students — that we can then choose to polish up and use in subsequent years! Help them to incorporate elements into their challenges like having to write in a scholarly fashion. Help them to incorporate elements that use the vernacular of that location. Put some high-stakes to the situation.
3. Lastly, we might try to find ways to make the challenges relevant to the students’ age groups. What are other kids/tweens/teens in that country doing right now? How are we similar? And how is our communication different?

Unfortunately, for those teachers looking to me for help, I’m unable to write the specific curriculum, since I am an American English speaker. But I’m truly excited to help you learn some elements that create engaging challenges. Then you can add in the language and cultural aspects. If you’re interested in that, please let me know! I’ll have lots of questions!

And if you are a world languages teacher, please let me know how off-track I am with these thoughts. I get these questions on a near-monthly basis and would appreciate any insight I can offer these teachers who are so hungry to do the right thing for their kids.