Creative, Appealing, Meaningful Learning

[pullquote]In Project-based Learning, students experience school as appealing and the work of their teachers and peers as innovative. In well designed projects, students explore different perspectives and create their own understanding of the world’s most meaningful topics.[/pullquote]Grant Wiggins has just written about a study released in 1983 – my freshman year of high school. The study’s conclusions fit what I remember about schooling:

“School curriculum is sterile. Topics of great human interest on the way to the classroom are apparently transformed and homogenized into something of limited appeal. Students scarcely ever speculate on meaning or discuss alternative interpretations. Teachers teach as they were taught years ago in their own schooling. All the messages received by them conspire to reinforce the status quo. The cards are stacked against innovation.” [emphasis added]

Grant’s post ends with “plus ça change“, and I don’t doubt that in many classrooms, if not in most in the United States, the curriculum is STILL sterile, and the work students are asked to do is STILL neither creative nor meaningful to them.

But many schools and teachers are doing innovative work. It’s not hard to be inspired by the great project-based teaching at High Tech High, the Science Leadership Academy, and at the New Tech Network Schools. In my own career, I’ve been fortunate to have the freedom to see the required curriculum differently, to be creative, and my students have benefited.

Here’s just one example.

In my U.S. History course last year, I wanted my students to think deeply about the cultural effects of the Cold War on American life. After a unit of study in which we explored many of the key political events and social trends through socratic seminar (try this method, here), I put some questions to my students:

• How might you have been affected by the events of the Cold War, if you had been alive then?
• How do you think these events in the U.S. and around the world affected individual Americans, and the culture in general?
• What cultural trends do you notice in America that might have been influenced by the Cold War?
• What more do you want to know about the Cold War’s impact on American life?

 

Students came up with some truly interesting responses, and raised a number of potential research and discussion topics. I challenged the students to consider if the topics were meaningful to other people, and how. I told them that if the topics passed my vetting process, they would be free to research them, but that they would have to share their answers with the world. They agreed.

By designing a project in which students pursue their own inquiry, what I was actually doing was asking them to speculate on what is historically meaningful and to develop their own interpretations of history. I asked them to be historians.

Here are their topics, in this Google Doc:

Sure, I had content goals for this project in mind before I gave it to the students. My challenge was to fit those content goals into the project’s design. Where there were gaps between the curriculum and the students’ interest, I designed some short socratic seminar moments and embedded them in class at key points during their research. By the end of the project, I was confident that my students were learning in ways that were creative, appealing, and meaningful to them.

In Project-based Learning, students experience school as appealing and the work of their teachers and peers as innovative. In well designed projects, students explore different perspectives and create their own understanding of the world’s most meaningful topics.

How can you see your curriculum differently?

 

Three Documents for your First American History Lesson Plan of The Year

Who Chooses War in a Constitutional Democracy?

It’s not often that one of the fundamental democratic questions is front and center for us. When President Obama spoke on Saturday about his intention that the United States should take military action against Syria, he seemed to imply that an important debate is still to be had on the question of how a democracy chooses to go to war.

If a goal of our work in History and Social Science classrooms is to provide a student-centered over content-centered experience – and that’s a debate that should be rested by  now – then middle and high school teachers around the country should be rethinking their lesson plans for Tuesday. What is before us this week is an opportunity to put students in an authentic inquiry, to behave as citizens of a democracy are intended to, and to practice important historical and critical thinking skills.

Whether it’s your first day of class, as mine will be in AP Government, or you’re a month in, consider taking Tuesday September 3rd to lead an inquiry-based discussion about democracy and war, about what it means to be a citizen in the United States.

Prepare:

To be sure you’re all set (or to provide further context for students if so desired), make a quick study of the War Powers page at the Library of Congress. Familiarize yourself with the debates over war powers from the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

In Class:

To begin the classroom lesson, pose the Discussion Question at the top of this post: Who Chooses War in a Constitutional Democracy? Invite some responses from students, and try to lead the conversation toward a recap of the events of the last two years in Syria, and of the last few weeks in Washington.

Then, put these documents in front of small groups of students:

• Text of President Obama’s speech re strikes on Syria, on 8/31/13: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/01/world/middleeast/text-of-president-obamas-remarks-on-syria.html?pagewanted=all
• The U.S. Constitution from the National Archives, Articles I, sec. 8, and II, sec. 2: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
• War Powers Act of 1973, sec. 1-5, via Yale Law School: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/warpower.asp

 

Post these questions for students to use while reading the documents:

• What are the key words and what do they mean? [Define]
• What does the passage mean? [Summarize]
• How does this passage relate to the DQ? [Analyze]

 

After allowing students to discuss DQ in their small groups, bring them back and lead a full class discussion on the question. Invite them to make a list of follow-up questions in their notes – ask them what questions are developing for them, and what answers do they need to be able to answer the DQ. Brainstorm the list of questions in front of the whole class.

Follow-up Discussions:

For an overnight assignment, invite students to investigate their questions and to look for more information. Discuss in class how that went, and look for ways to teach important lessons of information literacy.

I would follow up this class discussion with a online discussion that runs all week. A driving question for that could be about the proper role of a citizen: how important is it to discuss key questions? to share ideas with other citizens? to communicate with and be involved with political leaders? Students will come to their own conclusions about citizenship.

One of our most important roles as educators is to prepare the citizenry for participation in democracy. We are presented this week with an opportunity to make this learning goal authentic, meaningful, and engaging for students.