After 40+ years of reporting about education, I am absolutely convinced that, in the very best schools, the students are the workers and the work they are doing is meaningful. What they do–their product–depends upon their ages and stages, but the concept doesn’t change.
In these schools, teachers are conductors, directors, supervisors, guides or docents.
This observation flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which holds that teachers are workers whose job is to produce capable students. That gets further bastardized when ‘capable’ is defined by test scores until we end up thinking, “The work of teachers is to add value, which is measured by higher test scores.”
If you had been traveling with me the past few weeks, you would
have seen three examples of outstanding education: My 3-year-old granddaughter’s pre-school, a 12th grade science class in a public high school in Philadelphia, and a journalism class at Palo Alto High School in California.
The 3-year-olds were working on a project designed to help with fine motor control and decision-making (with some American history mixed in, I imagine). My granddaughter and her classmates took the work seriously. {{1}} The product, a Thanksgiving turkey, has value (perhaps priceless to the parents who receive the fruits of the labor).
The Philadelphia 12th graders were also serious workers. Their assignment was to design age appropriate toys for babies and infants, toys that will amuse and stimulate brain development. Stage two of the task: come up with an advertising campaign to sell the toy they designed.
That’s a serious project, with a real product. Science teacher Tim Best designed it in broad strokes, with some clear goals, including learning a great deal about brain development. By 12th grade at this school, students are accustomed to working together on projects; they hold each other accountable, although Mr. Best is also monitoring their progress.
Tim Best and other teachers at Science Leadership Academy told me that projects are designed to teach both content and process.
Tim explained, “I learned by memorizing science words, but I don’t ask my students to memorize science words. I’d rather them experience the science and learn science by doing science, and, therefore, they’re learning science process in addition to science content. And science process, you could argue, is almost more important for the general person who is not going to be a scientist.”
He added, “‘Reading chapter two and answering the questions at the end of the chapter’ is not teaching either science or process.”
I think the journalism students at Palo Alto High School must be the luckiest kids in the world. Their brilliant teacher, Esther Wojcicki {{2}}, and her talented colleagues {{3}}, give them the opportunity to produce meaningful journalism in a number of formats: a newspaper, radio programs, a daily television program and five magazines.
This is real-world work: The print {{4}} publications are advertiser-supported, and none can come out until the students have the signed advertising contracts in hand. “This is not selling
Girl Scout cookies,” she told me. “This is how the real world works.”
With opportunity comes responsibility. At Paly the journalism students hold each other accountable, the faculty is paying attention and–most powerful of all–their work is public. Among Esther’s former students is James Franco, the actor-painter-writer. Recalling her class, he wrote, “(T)he important pedagogical aspect of working on the paper, that I understood subconsciously then,
and that I understand explicitly as a teacher now, is that my work was being seen by a public, and that that changed the work. I wasn’t writing for a school grade as much as I was writing for independent readers.” {{5}}
What’s essential in all project-based learning is the absence of a ‘right’ answer or ‘right’ product. It truly is a journey, one which may also teach the instructor a good deal. Tim Best told me that projects that have a predetermined answer are merely recipes, not a journey of discovery. Good journalism is by definition an inquiry: Journalists are supposed to ask questions they don’t know the answers to.
In ‘faux projects,’ the work quickly loses meaning, and most students do not retain what they were supposed to learn. They may absorb material and regurgitate it successfully on tests, but that’s not genuine learning.
Those students in Philadelphia and Palo Alto are engaged in what’s called ‘blended learning,’ a mix of technology and human teaching. The machines and the teachers are interdependent, truly blended. Think of a chocolate milkshake, as opposed to putting oil and water in the same container.
The popular phrase, “Learning by doing,” is an incomplete thought, a phrase lacking an essential object. Doing WHAT is critical. In the three good schools I just visited, kids don’t get free rein to do whatever they feel like doing. Adults design (or help design) the projects, and they monitor progress. Teachers help students formulate questions and give guidance when they go off track or get discouraged.
“Time on task” is another incomplete phrase. What’s the task? Is it meaningful or trivial? Are students memorizing the periodic table and the major rivers of the United States, or are they measuring air or water quality in their neighborhoods and sharing the data with students in other places in order to make sense of it? Many educators make the mistake of focusing on the amount of time students are spending on the assignment (believing that more is better, of course) but fail to think critically about the tasks they are assigning.
The best schools {{6}} are serious about the ‘what’ and the ‘task,’ because the adults in charge of those schools are not obsessed about control.
Unfortunately, too many schools focus on regurgitation of information, a process that is encouraged and rewarded by the testing regime and the public focus on scores on standardized tests. It takes courage to swim against the tide, to challenge the conventional wisdom.
We need to celebrate and encourage teachers like Tim Best and Esther Wojcicki and their like-minded colleagues.
And maybe our K-12 schools should emulate what happens in the best pre-schools.
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[[1]]1. If it hadn’t been Fathers/Grandfathers Day, she would have had time to add more feathers. I’m sure her Thanksgiving Turkey will be resplendent before she takes it home to her parents.[[1]]
[[2]]2. Full disclosure: Esther is a friend and the Chair of the Board of Learning Matters, my non-profit production company.[[2]]
[[3]]3. Paul Kandell, Paul Hoeprich, Brett Griffith, and Margo Wixom.[[3]]
[[4]]4. They are also on line, of course.[[4]]
[[5]]5. Taken from the foreword to her forthcoming book, “Moonshots in Education.”[[5]]
[[6]]6. Tom Vander Ark has published his list of 100 schools worth visiting. Palo Alto HS makes the list, along with a lot of ‘no excuses’ programs and some ‘blended learning’ and project-based programs. It’s quite a mix, and ‘worth visiting’ seems to be a carefully-chosen phrase, stopping short of a full-throated endorsement. http://gettingsmart.com/2014/11/100-schools-worth-visiting [[6]]
