I looked at him and said, "Why?" His answer was not surprising and I'm sure is the sentiment of many kids just like him. He said, "It's' boring! All we do are worksheets, packets and read from an old textbook in EVERY class." He proceeded to tell me he wished it was like the old days when the teachers really cared about him as a person. Over the years he was blessed with some phenomenal teachers who really cared about him and pushed his to do more than he thought he could. Immediately, I began to think about how or what I could do to change this situation.
Teachers want students to be engaged in the classroom, but in order for that to happen, the student has to want to be in that class. Passing out another worksheet or answering the four questions at the end of the chapter is not going to lead to student engagement.
I am the instructional technology facilitator at the junior high in my district, so my job is to help change this mindset. The conversation with my son coincidentally happened two days before a faculty meeting where I was to lead the staff in a problem based learning activity. My principal had put this on the announcements for the last two weeks and I had already encountered staff telling me, "I think this is too much", "Our plates are full already", "I don't think we are ready." I really felt that if I could introduce the topic and lead the staff in actually participating in a problem based learning activity that they would see it isn't that scary or hard and could easily fit within what they are teaching in their particular subject areas. So, I trudged ahead and got the activity ready to go. The other tech facilitator that I work with was not able to be there to help me with this meeting and I was very nervous about leading 40-50 staff members through this by myself, as this was my first time to facilitate a whole staff activity. Fortunately I did coerce another colleague to help me which eased some of my anxiety. I am a teacher and have sat through many faculty meetings where people checked their phones, looked at their watches and engaged in side bar conversations. I had never been on the other side of the table until now and truthfully, it terrified me.
I broke the staff into groups and introduced the activity. Then, I nervously watched to see what would happen. This particular activity was on Alzheimer's Disease. The teacher's role in a problem based activity is to facilitate, so as I walked around I noticed that they were really participating in the activity. I started to get excited! My principal came and stood beside me and said, "Look at them, what do you see?" I didn't know what exactly he was getting at and so I stood there and hem hawed a little bit and he said, "Total Engagement... this is awesome." As I wrapped up the activity and told them I would love to come and help them plan a PBL for their subject, I felt a tremendous sense of relief. I had worked through my nerves and it had gone well. The seeds had been planted.
Hopefully, they will take me up on my offer and we can start slowly moving up the SAMR ladder. Maybe the worksheets and boring packets will slowly get replaced with these higher order thinking, collaborative, real-world activities. I sure hope so because I long for the day when my teenager gets in the car and says, "Mom, we did the coolest activity at school today."
