If you’re a teacher, or just someone on the outside looking in, then much like a teacher, you oftentimes find yourself shaking your head at some of the decisions when it comes to administration’s dependency on the latest acronym and educational fad. This brings us to one of the most current trainings that are run by a well-known institute named after a synonym for a male deer: Project-Based Learning (PBL).
For starters, I’m not against projects in the classroom, nor are other teachers that I work with. In fact, if you can remember far enough back, we used to have project-based classes. I’m talking about the shoppe classes, drivers ed., home economics, and accounting (I know I missed some, but you get the point). There are still some hands-on classes left on master schedules, such as art, ceramics, or even ROP classes. But as you know, those classes are the first on the chopping block whenever the district falls on hard times; though, this always seems to be the case regardless of how well the economy is doing.
A couple of years ago, the top administration over at the district office decided to drop about $130k on a training for teachers that was, for the majority of attendees, unnecessary. As usual when it comes to these types of decisions, they don’t bother to get any input from the teachers that might already be incorporating projects into their classrooms—though it did give us “charrette”, “gallery walk”, and a few other words and phrases that make the expenditure worth it in the eyes of the board and administration. Those at the top simply wanted to brag through the district’s website and newsletter that all of the teachers in the district are PBL trained in the hopes that parents in the area will notice and enrollment might finally turnaround (hint: it hasn’t).
The majority of the training were teachers spending time recreating projects that they had already done with their students, but using the format supplied by those that we paid to run the training—which is something that could’ve easily been done without the $130k price tag. Granted, a new teacher would have benefited a little more from this training, but we could have just as easily paired up new teachers with veterans and had them work together; creating the type of collaborative environment that administration is always talking about, but never seem to figure out how to do it.
There is a bit of irony regarding these PBL trainings. The first, is that many teachers try to incorporate projects into their classrooms every year, but have little time to do so because of the pacing guides—created by administration—that we are required to follow. The second, and most ironic part, is that it’s these same administrators that are cutting project-based classes that are also pushing for project-based learning.
Case in point. Circa 2013, I was finally able to get our school’s first coding class on the master schedule: html and JavaScript. Keep in mind that I had been trying to do this since I started in the year 2000. The class ran for four years, but wasn’t on the schedule last year and is not again on the schedule for the ’19-’20 school year. Also understand that this class is almost entirely project based and implements a number of facets that administration is constantly telling teachers that need to be incorporated into our classes, such as student collaboration and group projects. The class is also an application of mathematics, problem solving, and critical thinking. I even purchased a url to post the larger, group projects online for all the world to see and paid, and continue to pay for, the hosting. Just click the image below or the link here: Student Projects (projects only work on a computer or tablet).
The reason that the class wasn’t offered last year, and won’t be offered again this year (honestly, it will probably never be offered again, at least at this district), is that the class size is usually between 15 and 18 students. This actually worked to the students’ favor as there were only 20 laptops available and on any given day, at least 2 of the laptops wouldn’t work. I also occasionally teach an AP class, the size of which is usually around the same. Long story short, the district doesn’t see any value in a teacher having two smaller sized classes (my other four usually hover around 30-36), and had to get rid of one. In other words, I’ll teach one or the other, but not both. And since AP classes are used as a means of advertising to parents in the hopes of increasing enrollment, the coding class is not on the schedule for next year.
When it comes to spending money, administration has no problem cutting a check to a group of people who are well versed in the latest in educational acronyms; a group of people who—much like many of the administrators that we hire—wouldn’t know of our district’s existence until we hired them to lead the training. This could have just as easily been a teacher-led training that would have saved the district well over $100k (though they would have found another way to spend it), but that wouldn’t have cost the district a dime with exception to maybe supplying the teachers with breakfast and lunch.
As usual, administration makes another decision without getting input from those in the classroom to see if said decision is necessary. And as I mentioned, this could have just as easily been a teacher-led training for minimal cost. But when it comes down to it, administration are of the mindset that the only pedagogical practices that are of value are the same ones that need to be paid for, and pay for we did.
Secretary: Mr. Escalante, Mr. Escalante, did you hear the news? We got the computers!
Jaime Escalante: Yep, that’ll do it.
(Stand and Deliver, 1988)