LifePractice PBL
Let's connect!
  • Welcome
    • About Us
    • LP Philosophy
  • Tips & Solutions
  • The Book!
  • PBL Recipe Cards
    • An Overview
    • Sample PBL Cards
  • Learn PBL!
    • Hire us to come to your school
    • Licensed trainers only
  • Let's Talk

Evil Teacher Traps in the PBL Environment

8/31/2011

1 Comment

 

cross posted from www.GingerLewman.org
You've done your planning. 

You've been very purposeful in creating perfect environment. The teachers are trained. The materials and resources are available. The parents are informed. The administrators are in support. The curriculum is strong and rigorous. The expectations are clear and have been shared with and built upon by the students. The groups are lined out and they have their contracts signed and are ready to go. 

It's time! The work begins!

But wait. The sharp-witted educator is still cautious and keenly self-aware of her own actions and reactions with students.

This is precisely the danger-time when even the best teachers have a natural tendency to fall into one of the three nasty traps that will quickly and mercilessly kill the learning, the excitement, engagement and true learning that Project Based Learning offers. 


Trap #1 Becoming “Hannah Helper”

Some educators tend to over-help the kids by directly teaching information, improving student ideas with their own, and have their own hands on the work instead of the kids' hands working. These teachers are excited about the project and the possibilities of the learning that can happen. They see students floundering at times and with one eye on the deadline clock, they decide to help out or demonstrate how something can be done, but often end up doing the majority of the work themselves. These teachers also are worried that not all students are getting the deep content and detailed facts that they'd get if the teacher was handing out worksheets and assigning reading homework. 

In short, they're great teachers who care about the students' quality of learning, but they have trouble allowing students to make mistakes and grow on their own merits. At the root, they don't trust that students are ever able to learn without their direct interference. 

Students need to learn how to find, support, and create their own learning with nurturing guidance that allows for mistakes and ”messy learning” to happen. It’s ok. It’s part of the learning process. “Hannah Helper” can help by asking questions that cause students to rethink or think deeper. She doesn’t have to always be the source of information for learning and growth. 


Trap #2  Becoming “Larry Lazy”

Some educators embrace the concept of student-directed learning a little too literally, comfortably siting back and watching the kids work or struggle. They tell themselves that students are learning how to manage time and work. They also tell themselves that they are helping students to learn persistence and authentic consequences by allowing students who aren't working to have "free choice to fail" too. 


This is simply lazy and quite honestly, it's educational malpractice of the worst kind. These teachers give Project Based Learning, and education in general, a bad name. All students deserve some direction, encouragement, intellectual poking, and the teacher's admiration of their hard work and quality efforts. Don't fall into this trap.


Trap #3: Becoming “Polly Police Officer”

Some educators feel that in Project Based Learning, there is a distinct lack of structure, discipline and order. They feel that students might have have too much freedom and they want to insulate students from anything that might potentially become a safety issue. As it turns out, they often feel that just about anything outside of a traditional classroom structure could pose danger. 

In short, “Polly Police Officer” teachers don't trust students to be able to ever choose to do the right thing in a given situation, so since one student might do something wrong, then no student is allowed to have that freedom, and they become that Police Officer, writing detention tickets to anyone who steps outside of the traditional environment's rules. Instead of teaching safety and social norms, the Police Officer bans and outlaws. 

This is the bane of most structure inside of traditional classroom models. In a LifePractice classroom, students need to be able to explore options, collaborate, work intelligently with tools, and learn to make guided decisions, practicing independence and appropriate, real-life social behavior. Don't fall into this trap.



The teacher’s role inside the LifePractice PBL environment is one that's defined by flexibility, energy, collaboration, and with a supportive mindset. Students are asked questions to probe their learning, to learn more about their design choices. This way, teachers can learn whether the student’s thinking is on the right track or if s/he needs redirection.  The effective PBL teacher will repeat to themselves, “As a teacher, I’m a resource, not THE source.” Learn it and use it in good health.




For more information about the LifePractice PBL model, please visit our Facebook Page  https://www.facebook.com/LifePracticePBL

Our website, book, and training materials to support our Project Recipe Cards are nearly ready for launching. Be sure to Like the Facebook page so you can keep up to date! 


As always comments and questions are welcomed!


1 Comment

Learning is Messy *if you're doing it right

8/22/2011

0 Comments

 
cross posted from www.GIngerLewman.org

When I went through the Teacher’s College so many years ago, my professors did a very thorough job of impressing upon me the need to have all the students learning the same thing at the same time. The analogy I remember quite clearly from Dr. Samuelson was taking a tour through a house, where we all had to go in the front door together, take a look at each room together, then leave out the back door together, and woe be to the educator who let a kid wander or get lost. 

While there are times when this is an appropriate approach, I’m not sure it’s a realistic model in today’s world. In recent years, I have set aside many things I was taught to do in my Teacher’s College education classes, in favor of trying to structure the learning environment to be driven by what my students will need in their future lives. I became less content-driven, less-teacher focused in my approach and more skills-driven, more student-centered. 

I figured I could have the kids come to me (or their parents or their other teachers) to pick up their daily allotment of fish every single day of their lives, or I could teach them how to fish.

In doing so, it became clear to me that students needed to experience what I then called, “the vague-haziness” of the world. Rarely do we get tour guides for life. Often we have to be able to problem-solve our own tours of that Teacher’s College house. In my work with kids, I began giving vague, hazy instructions and supporting them to problem-solve solutions. It was ok to have different strategies than your peers. In our creativity work, it was encouraged to have different results and methods. 

Sure some students balked, preferring when I just gave them a fish, rather than having to work and learn. Sometimes I was too vague in my instructions. I found it took a balance of knowing your students and understanding the potential of your students. Most students embraced the freedom and the responsibility I was giving them. They were experiencing LifePractice. 

And so it went. In our daily learning environment, students were provided tools to learn,  tools to demonstrate their learning, and the freedom to use those tools as they saw fit. The overall expectations were clear, but the directions on how to get there were vague and hazy. On purpose. 

I found out a couple of years after we’d been running the LifePractice Model that Alan November was calling this vague-haziness, “optimal ambiguity,” and I latched on to that wordsmithed phrase with my life. I was creating an environment of optimal ambiguity which was allowing my students permission to problem-solve. To think individually or as a group. To need to brainstorm solutions. To prioritize tasks. To set steps to meet timelines and deadlines. To be able to best show how they, as individuals, had accomplished the learning goals. 

In short, my students and I (and the very, very nervous parents) had developed the LifePractice Model. 

We were guided by the tested standards, sure, but the regurgitation of facts was not the end goal. The end goal was to develop learners. People who would be able to function both academically and socially without having to have someone tell them what to, when to, how to. That they had brains in their heads and they were expected to use them for the Greater Good: “What do I need as an individual? What do we need as a group? What does the school need as a community? Where do my actions fit into this schema?”  

They were asked to look for their own strengths and to recognize the strengths of others and learn how to maximize those strengths. This served to help them individually with self-esteem, but it also served to help them build up one another instead of tear each other down, as I see as an innate foundation in so many other academic (schooly-school) systems; those are focused on where kids need help, where the individual is weak, where they need to strengthen their skills and knowledge. This only serves to get kids to hide their weaknesses, not address them.  To focus on strengths helps build self-esteem and allows a learner’s mind to be opened to suggestions and work for growth in non-strength areas. 

Compare this with banging on their heads all day with the messages, “this is where you’re weak, this is what you got wrong, this is what you need to do, this is where your performance is poor.” 

The LifePractice Model asks learners of all ages in the community to work hard and to respect the work of others. It is not prescriptive. It is not a “one-approach works for everyone” model.  LifePractice is simply that: practicing real life skills in an environment that mimics the real world in as many ways as is practical. 

It is 100% individual, run in a group-based model, just like life. Like family.

Each teacher focuses on each child and what their strengths and needs are. It requires us to know the children, fully and completely. Sure, we have to sometimes have tough conversations. We have to look at discipline on an individual basis and not rely on a “one-size-fits-all” approach because it simply doesn’t. We have to get close to kids. We sometimes have to get snot on us. 

Because if you ain’t got it on you, you ain’t got it in you. 

Learning is messy, if you’re doing it right.

0 Comments

Doing Something Different

8/18/2011

0 Comments

 

cross posted from www.GingerLewman.org
Doing something different is fueled by thinking about things you've always done and asking yourself, "What's the purpose of this? Is the purpose currently moving us forward toward innovation?" 

It's tough to step outside and regard yourself objectively, but a vital skill to nurture in ourselves and in our students. Sometimes we may have to give ourselves/students the freedom to walk a path for a while before we realize this isn't the path for us. Or read a few chapters into the book. Until you've tried the new with honesty, you can't always readily dismiss it.

Ultimately, if you want something different, you have to do something different.

0 Comments
    Picture

    Archives

    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    October 2013
    August 2013
    May 2013
    February 2013
    March 2012
    February 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011

    Categories

    All
    Experts
    Learning By Doing
    Media
    Pbl
    Realities
    Research
    Stories
    Tips & Tricks
    Tips & Tricks

    Picture
    @GingerLewman on Twitter Click the picture to go to my own website.

    Author,
    Ginger Lewman

    Just a few thoughts surrounding the idea of LifePractice PBL.

    RSS Feed

Picture

                                   1500 E 11th St Ste #200, Hutchinson, Kansas, USA 67501; Phone: 620-663-9566; Fax: 620-663-5734