PBL and the Search for an Authentic Audience - A Success Story

I have written before that one of the most difficult parts of constructing a true Project Based Learning project is finding an authentic audience for the project.  I spoke at length with the wonderful Suzie Boss (@suzieboss) about this topic over the summer, and we agreed that sometimes you have to "invent" an audience.  By that I mean that, as I wrote in the linked blogpost, sometimes you set up someone or a group of people to be an audience, and for the purposes of the project they play the role of someone who has a genuine interest in the project.  Think about a school science fair - most parents who come to view the projects have no prior interest in any of those topics (even the topic chosen by their own child), but they take a momentary interest during the fair - then go home and more or less forget about all of it.

However, I am happy to share a true success at finding an authentic audience.  My colleague Simcha Schaum (@simchaschaum) conducted a project last spring with his 6th grade class where he asked them to learn material relating to some of the seasonal changes made in the prayers.  He charged the students with creating bookmarks that theoretically could be handed out in shuls (synagogues) so that people would know what changes to make when, and what to do if they made a mistake.  Rabbi Schaum had a couple of local Rabbis come to class so the students could present their bookmarks, and the project concluded with some very wonderful presentations and some very gracious Rabbis.

However, the project did not conclude there.  This past week on the Jewish calendar was one of the times when changes are made to the prayers.  And a day or two later, Rabbi Schaum received the following email from one of the Rabbis who visited his class back in May:

Hi Rabbi Schaum,

As [you may have heard], the bookmarks were a huge hit in shul on Shmini Atzeres.  I distributed them (and explained where they came from) and went over the related halachos [laws] before Musaf, and that was the heads-up to begin saying Mashiv Haruach.  Everyone has been using the bookmarks to remind themselves to say Mashiv Haruach and enjoying them.

Yasher Koach [kudos] to you and the students, and thank you!

Wishing you much hatzlacha [success] this year,

The "pretend" authentic audience, which at the time was sufficient to motivate the students to complete their projects, has successfully become a real authentic audience!  While not every project meets with such success, it is inspiring to know that our audience is out there - we just have to set the wheels in motion so that we can find them.

The Return of Jedchat

To many people, Twitter is the very definition of a waste of time.  It is where movie stars and athletes share their deep thoughts and remind the rest of us that they are not poets or philosophers.  However, for many people, and for many educators in particular, Twitter is a magnificent way to connect, to share, and to broaden one's horizons.

One of the most exciting things about Twitter is a twitterchat.  While probably not what the creators of the social networking site had in mind, twitterchats are high-paced and concise (only 140 characters at a time) conversations among an unlimited amount of participants.  Chats operate by employing a hashtag (or #hashtag), and each post includes that hashtag.  Participants set their Twitter page (or hootsuite, tweetdeck, or other such program) to follow that tag, and - presto - every post that includes that tag, even if made by someone that they are not following, appears in their stream.

Following in the footsteps of the wonderful #edchat, a twice-weekly chat about all things education, #jedchat was begun two years ago by Akevy Greenblatt (@Akevy613), Dov Emerson (@dovemerson), and Meir Wexler (@RabbiWex) as a parallel version focusing on Jewish education.  The weekly chats became a meeting place for many Jewish educators who wanted to expand their networks and discuss some of the pressing issues in Jewish education, and the hashtag itself became an ongoing way for those educators to reach out to one another to seek advice, share successes, and disseminate news.

With the founders having all moved on to new endeavors and having less time to devote to Jedchat, a new team of moderators will be kicking off Jedchat's third year this Wednesday night, October 2nd, from 9pm to 10pm Eastern Time.  Some things to know about the new season of Jedchat:

• Moderators - Jedchat will be moderated this year by Rabbi Avi Bernstein (@RabbiBernstein), Aliza Chanales (@alizachanales), and yours truly (@rabbiross).
• Unlike in the past, when Jedchat presented a topic and let the conversation range freely for an hour, the chats will hopefully take the more structured form favored by chats such as #educoach, which present a series of guiding questions throughout the course of the chat to help keep the conversation moving and to prevent one aspect of the topic from dominating or becoming stale.
• Polls will be put out via Twitter every Tuesday offering a selection of potential topics for the next night's chat.

Of course, one of the best aspects of #Jedchat is that it is an opportunity for professional growth and development that is absolutely free.  No airfare, no conference fees, no tolls.  As long as you have an internet connection nearby, you can be a part of this wonderful conversation.  So share this post with other Jewish educators, and clear your schedule for Wednesday nights.  We look forward to welcoming you to the conversation. 

Teachers are Experts Too

A woman took her 9-year old son to the doctor for his annual physical.  After the usual battery of measurements, pokes, prods, and shots, and after the doctor had completed asking the child about his eating habits, daily activities, and favorite sports teams, the doctor turned to the mother to offer his assessment of the child's health.

"It seems that your son is a wonderful and healthy boy," the doctor began.  "Of course, he should eat some more fruits and vegetables, and we do recommend trying to limit screen time if possible, but he is generally growing exactly the way we would expect him to."

"Thank you," replied his mother.  "What about his height and weight."

"Looking good there as well.  He is 45th percentile in both height and weight, which is more or less consistent with his development until now."

An awkward silence.

"Forty-fifth percentile??" responded the mother.  "I don't understand that.  My husband is over six feet tall and I was always on the tall side myself!  How can our child possibly be below average??"

Taken slightly aback, the doctor tried to allay the mother's concerns: "I wouldn't be concerned at all.  There is nothing in any of his records or tests that would indicate any form of abnormality.  Furthermore, we see many children who have dramatic growth spurts in the early teenage years."

"Are you sure you measured properly?  I mean, you are only seeing him here in the office.  I see him every day, with his siblings and friends, and he certainly doesn't look like below average to me!"

"There really is nothing to be alarmed about," said the doctor, trying again, " He is a healthy boy with good habits who is developing just the way we want him to."

"You know, I have never seen that nurse who took the measurements before," continued the mother, barely heeding the words of the doctor. "Is she new here?  How long ago did she receive her degree?  How do I know that she knows what she is doing?"

End of story

************************
I think that, for most of us, the above story sounds ridiculous.  Yes, people do sometimes seek out second opinions, but probably not about the height and weight of their nine-year old child.  Certainly, we would not expect someone to challenge the medical credentials and abilities of the doctors and nurses who have taken such measurements.

And yet - what if this story was taking place not in a doctor's office but in the principal's office?  What if the issue was not the height of the child but an assessment of the child's academic abilities?  Would we find the story ridiculous - or familiar (not necessarily from personal experience, but perhaps from hearing about someone else who had just such a conversation)?  I think that the answer to this question is fairly obvious.

But why?  Why would people who would never question their doctor's assessment of their child so readily question the assessment of another type of professional?  At some level, I believe that people understand that educators know their business, and that business is mainly understanding children, understanding how children learn and interact, and using that understanding to find ways to best teach that child and foster his growth as a student and as a citizen - and doing the same thing for scores of different children at the same time.  It is a business that requires its practitioners to be part teacher, part psychologist, part peace-maker, part politician, and part-so-many-other-things-that-I-can't-list them-all.  True, teaching relies far more on on-the-job training (experience) than on formal classroom training (you don't need a Ph.D. to teach), but most people don't question their mechanic either and he received very little classroom training for his job.

An interesting thought occurred to me in this vein while reading this article by the wonderful Joe Posnanski, perhaps one of the best sportswriters, and therefore best writers, around today.  In the article, Posnanski asks why everyone cares about baseball players who use steroids, yet everyone more or less knows that steroids are rampant in football and no one bats an eyelash.  His answer, in a nutshell, is that baseball seems to each of us like something that we could probably do, and therefore we are offended on a more visceral level when we find out that someone has cheated.  Football is basically "American Gladiator" - pure entertainment that most of us could not and would not take part in.  But plenty of middle-age men out there are still playing softball every Sunday, convinced that they are one swing away from making SportsCenter.

Teaching seems to me to have some of the same sense of "I could do that" hanging over it.  How many parents were at one time a youth group leader, camp counselor, little league coach, scoutmaster, etc?  They have had experience leading and instructing children!  How different is teaching?  Sure, teachers do it every day and not once a week; and, sure, teachers have to get kids to do sometimes unpleasant tasks like finding root words and multiplication tables; and, of course, teachers have to worry about things like state standards and lesson plans and parent-teacher conferences and report cards; but, at the end of the day, isn't teaching English to 7th grade boys five days a week for a year basically the same thing as coaching them for 10 Sundays in the spring?

Of course it's not.  However, the possibility exists to have such thoughts.  I don't think that taking biology in 9th grade gives me license to question my doctor, and I don't think that one undergrad course in the Constitution makes me Alan Dershowitz.  By the same token, and in the same way that baseball looks doable but is played at a level beyond what most of us could ever hope to do, teaching is a specialized profession performed by real professionals.  Thankfully, most parents do realize that.  Spread the word.

Teaching Text Skills in PBL

Over the past several years, I have had the opportunity to speak to many wonderful educators with an interest in introducing Project Based Learning into their classrooms.  Their sincerity and commitment has been inspiring, and their many and varied questions have consistently pushed me to better define my perspective on PBL and to continue to hone my own skills in that regard.

One question that inevitably arises when discussing PBL in a Judaic Studies classroom in how to teach text skills via this approach.  While we are known as "the People of the Book", we are actually the People of several books, with Mishna and Gemara (Talmud) joining Chumash and Navi (Bible) in our basic corpus and our basic curriculum.  While it is true that instruction in these subjects becomes more theoretical and less textual as the students grow and mature, there is no question that at all levels an inability to decode the basic texts is a sine qua non being able to move forward in one's learning.

But how does one accomplish the goal of teaching text skills in a PBL environment?  Project-Based Learning's entire framework is focused on seeing the learning unit as a whole, determining the Driving Questions which underlie and will thus drive the entire unit, and more or less assumes that students will be able to take the necessary steps to find the materials that they need to satisfactorily answer the Driving Question.  Where in all of that is there room for searching out word roots, acquiring the key vocabulary necessary to follow the give-and-take of the Talmud, or deciphering the strange script in which Rashi and other commentaries are printed?

It's a difficult question.  Without face-to-face instruction and without the endless worksheets that most of us remember from the days when we were acquiring reading skills, how is a teacher to ensure that his or her students are gaining the basic skills that will serve as the foundation for all of their future learning?  To that query, I have at least two suggestions:

1) Separate reading skills from PBL units.  There is no command from on high that every lesson that a person ever teaches has to be part of a PBL unit.  Given the amount of work that goes into creating and managing such a unit, any normal person will likely need a bit of a break between PBL units, and there is a good chance that the students will appreciate a few solid days of gold old, traditional, whole-class learning.  Use those times for skill-building.

2) On the other hand, PBL units could be a wonderful time to reinforce skills (I am not so sure that I would teach basic reading skills from scratch within PBL, but strengthening those skills for students in grades 5 and above could work).  Inevitably, there are students who pick up the skills very quickly and those who need more practice.  In a traditional setting, those students who have quickly mastered the material are often forced to wait until every student has learned the material to a level deemed acceptable by the teacher.  Boredom ensues.

Within a PBL unit, every student, or at least every group, is free to move at their own pace.  I encourage teachers who want to introduce skill-building into the curriculum to place several required exercises into the material.  Have students read required texts on voicethread, ask them to punctuate a sample piece of Gemara, or provide them with a shoresh (root word) hunt/game that will yield some result that is key to their being able to complete a larger piece of the unit.  In all of these ways, and countless others that people will undoubtedly devise, quick moments of skill-building can be introduced as part of the work needed for the PBL unit, and teachers can therefore identify which students might need a little extra face time with the teacher or some eventual additional instruction or activities to continue working on these all-important skills.

The Washington Post vs. Mr. Miyagi

I recently came across this post on the Washington Post website, by Valerie Strauss but actually by Roger Schank, which explains, subject by subject, why kids hate school.  The overall gist of the column is that students are not taught any knowledge that is of immediate relevance to their lives, and therefore they are bored and disillusioned with their education, simply counting off days and filling in scantron bubbles until graduation.

Anticipating the inevitable blowback, the author mentions criticism that he has received for writing similar articles in the past, most of that criticism coming from teachers, and condescendingly forgives the teachers for their ire, noting that it is not their fault, they are only teaching what they are ordered to teach by a larger and faceless system.

Well.

It seems to me that Mr. Schank has regrettably never seen the Karate Kid.  If he had, perhaps he would recall how Mr. Miyagi, one of the greatest of all movie teachers, taught karate to young Daniel-San.  No calisthenics, no kicks, no chops, no nothing that looks at all like karate.  Rather, he had Daniel program what seemed like slave labor - paint the fence, wax the car, sand the deck - every time with a specific motion, and every time until Daniel reached theist of exhaustion.  The true climax of the movie is not the final scene when Daniel defeats his nemesis (I would give a spoiler alert, but if you have not seen it yet, I take no responsibility), but rather when Mr. Miyagi demonstrates to Daniel that all of that hard labor was in fact teaching him the proper techniques that he would need in order to master karate.

(For those who prefer literature to cinema, the same thing takes place in T. H. White's The Once and Future King, as Merlin gives Wart a curious education, all of which comes into play during the climactic scene of the novel.)

Back to Mr. Schank.  On one level, he is on to something.  It is much easier to learn something when you can see its immediate relevance.  In fact, that is a large part of my motivation behind project-based learning.  However, not every thing that we learn has an immediate connection to the world around us. Many parts of our education have a slow and steady impact on us, shaping our character, molding the way that we think, broadening our horizons and the way that we view the world and the people in it.  The purpose of a broad and deep liberal arts education, something that is under severe assault in our society on several fronts, is not to create future professors of liberal arts, but to create thoughtful, discerning, and sensitive citizens.  

I would be interested to hear the type of curriculum that Mr. Schank would propose.  But more than that, I would be interested to see the type of students and citizens that he would intend to produce.  I am keeping my money on the Miyagi approach.  After all, it worked the first time.

Do We Still Need Gemaras?

When I was first learning Gemara, before the advent of Artscroll, if you wanted a text that could help you out, you basically had two choices.  The old-school choice was the Soncino translation, an English version of the Gemara that was written in a vocabulary almost as difficult as the Hebrew/Aramaic original.  Alternatively, there was the Steinsaltz Gemara, a new and new-fangled version that was quite intriguing.  Rather than maintain the classic "Vilna" layout of the page, Steinsaltz broke the text into topical paragraphs, added punctuation, and included his own running commentary/explanation alongside those of Rashi and Tosafot, the two "big guns" on the standard page.  For making all of these seemingly helpful changes to the page (not to the text, which remained the same), Steinsaltz was widely excoriated and shunned, and by the time he finally got around to completing his massive work, the Artscroll revolution was upon us.

You can read more about the controversy over Steinsaltz's Gemara at this post by my friend David Zinberg. The main issue that he raises is one that is bubbling up right now for Jewish educators - do we even need to hand our students actual Gemaras (or Chumashing or Mishnayot or Neviim) anymore?  I am speaking specifically about schools that are trying out iPads for all students - there are several apps, some of them free, that contain the complete text of many classic Jewish texts.  Why not just have the students reference that version of the text on the same device that they are using to take notes?  It would avoid having students forget their books, and would provide opportunities for all sorts of innovative ways to learn and study.

One issue that Zinberg points out is the veneration of the classic Vilna layout of the page, completed between 1880 and 1886 by the Romm publishing house. In truth, the basic layout goes even further back and the Romm edition is merely the latest one to gain near-total acceptance.  Steinsaltz took heat for breaking that down.  Meanwhile, versions of the Gemara that add vowels to the Vilna page are seen perhaps as a crutch, but not as a threat, and the Artscroll Gemara, which severely reduces the need for the learner to put in all that much effort, has been heralded as the greatest thing to happen to Torah learning since Sinai.  The Artscroll iPad app, for all of its innovation, kept the standard page layout, and thus has received many of the same accolades as the print edition.

But should any of that matter?  Ask any Gemara teacher in Middle School or High School to list the skills that he or she is teaching, and "knowing how to navigate the standard page of Gemara" will certainly be on the list, but will likely be something to which only a small amount of time is devoted.  Vocabulary, key words, identifying whether a Tanna or an Amora is speaking, learning the different parts of the Gemara's argument - these are the key skills which occupy our time in the classroom, and they can all be learned regardless of the page layout.  By contrast, no such insistence on a page layout is required or even desired in any of the other text-based Judaic subjects - we tend to look for the edition that will work best for the students.

I am not saying that using a running text of the Gemara using the U'v'lechtecha BaDerech app is necessarily the best way to go.  Perhaps the sugya-based iBooks currently being crowdsourced through an effort of Rabbi Mordechai Smolarcik will be the wave of the future.  On the other hand, I can think of a variety of reasons why I might prefer an old-school paper edition of the Gemara in my classroom.  However, it is an issue whose time has come and that we should be prepared to explain to ourselves and our students why we are using whichever version of the text that we have decided to use.

What are your thoughts on the matter?  Please share in the comments section.

Reflections on ISTE 2013 (Which I didn't Attend)

ISTE 2013 - The International Society for Technology in Education's annual four-day confab, held this year in beautiful and broiler-hot San Antonio, Texas - ended last Wednesday afternoon with a rousing closing keynote address by Adam Bellow, encouraging all of us innovative and forward-thinking educators to do what we can to change the world.  Coming at the conclusion of four days of networking, learning, and peering into the future of technology, education, and the confluence of the two, Bellow's at times emotional, at time humorous speech was the pitch-perfect conclusion, sending the almost 20,000 attendees home energized and ready to make a real difference in their schools and to their students.

As I wrote about last year, the ISTE conference is an amazing and overwhelming experience.  Session range from discussing specific apps for the iPad to brainstorming new ways to demonstrate leadership within one's school.  The conference presents one with the chance to have those long conversations with colleagues that the school year leaves no time for, to connect with one's personal learning network in person, and to meet people from literally all over the world who bring a ridiculously wide range of experiences, ideas, and dreams and to work to help each other make those dreams a reality.  As ISTE came to a close, I was full of ideas and suggestions that I am eager to try out in the upcoming school year.  Just like last year

With one difference.  I was not at ISTE this year.

Nope.  For a variety of reasons, I was not able to make it down to Texas (will have to get to the Alamo another time).  However, that did not mean that I was left out of ISTE.  True, I did not get the face-to-face interaction that I would have had had I been there in person.  And I was not able to follow up every session that I attended with a schmooze with the presenter or with the person sitting next to me.  However, one of the true strengths of ISTE is that it exists within the various networks that all of its attendees have worked so hard to create over the past few year.  And, like and strong and solid network, not everyone has to participate in an activity in order for everyone to benefit.

Readers of this blog will not be shocked to hear that Twitter played a major role in my ISTE experience this year.  My good friend and frequent collaborator Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky took copious notes at his sessions on Evernote, tweeted them out, and made sure to mention me in the tweet if the topic was one that he felt was of particular interest to me.  The incomparable Suzie Boss kept up a constant twitter stream on PBL issues, and responded to many of many queries and comments throughout the week.  An untold number of people alerted me to which sessions were going on, allowing me to put out feelers for quotes, comments, and notes. Several of these sets of notes have been added to my Evernote notebook for future reference as I plan for next year.

There is no question that attending ISTE in person is infinitely more enjoyable and beneficial than living it vicariously through one's friends and network-mates.  By the same token, it is important to realize that while four intense days provides a nice charge, it is the other 361 days of the year that we have to take that charge and run with it.  My thanks to my network for sharing their excitement and learning with me - I hope to reciprocate from Atlanta next year.