Saturday, March 12, 2016

Changing Education Project - Results

   Last week, the little merpeople set off to tell me about how they wanted to change education. I created a very simple, yet complex, project for them, "How do you want to see your education change". They had only a few guidelines which were the following (in their exact form):

In groups no larger than 3 people, you are going to create a 5-10 minute presentation about how you want to see education changed, and how the perfect system of education looks to you. 

In your final presentation you must include:
*A brief history of education in the USA (no more than :45 seconds)
*What does education look like today? (no more than :45 seconds)
*How do you want to change education - what should it look like?
You can address ideas such as:
Homework
Time spent in school
Laws
Standardized Testing

This is an open assignment. You can make your presentation in any style you would like. It can be a video, slide show, song and dance… It’s OPEN to you!  

     As you can see, it was very open ended project. The idea was that this project would take 4 days for them to complete in class and then we would have two days of presentations for each class period. Without fail, we had an Internet DDoS attack last week, so we had two days where the kids could not access anything on their chrome books, so we got pushed back just a bit. We were finally able to get everything together and do presentations on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. Overall, most of the projects were pretty well done. We are still learning how to not read off the board and face the class when speaking, but other than that, 80% of the groups put in a good effort. While I knew this would not be a 100% success, as there are always the few who just don't get into the project, I think overall, this went quite well. 

   Based on what the kids presented I did learn a lot of key points about what they wanted to see in their education, and those are the points that I wanted to share with you:
  • No more homework 
  • Start school at a later time
  • More elective choices, especially hands-on classes
  • Option to have a "night school" where kids can go to school in the afternoons
  • Job placement support
  • More mental health services, for kids who need therapy and/or counseling
  • More teachers who care
  • Have both computer and paper based options, since some kids prefer one or the other
  • Be harder on kids who don't do their work in class since it brings other kid's grades down

   On that last note, each class and I had the discussion about effort based grading and their thoughts on it. 100% of my kids agreed that people who put in a lot of effort, but don't always get the right answer, should still get a large amount of points on the given project. Amazingly, they also all agreed that homework is allowed to be assigned if students do not finish the in-class work. And then, to top it off, they also all said it was fair for me to give 0's to students who do not give any effort during class and if they do not take their work home on it. One student in my 4th period even said, "It is not fair for you to have to justify giving a kid a grade if they waste your time too." That made me smile. 

    While on the top of grading, I also explained standard-based grading and how that will work with our effort-based grading scale. So far, they all seemed to understand... so I guess, so far so good!

   Once everyone had finished their presentations, the students had to complete a self-grading form about their effort in this project. Some of the self grades were interesting, but most of the kids graded them as I would have graded them. In addition to the self grade, they also had to answer the question "Honestly, what did you think about this project". Here are some of their responses:
  • "This project was very easy and a good way to let the teacher know how we feel about school and he way we ant education to be. I hope this project makes a difference in the way we have school to a way we want to have school be."
  • "i thought it was a fantastic idea for the entire class to do i really enjoyed it"
  • "It was actually pretty fun because we got to state our opinion on what we think plus we got to talk with our friends to work together."
  • "I think the project was kind of hard because, there are a lot of choices and answers for what education looks like today and what we wanted to look like. A lot of research of What education looked like today but, a relief when me and my partners have finished our power point together."
   Now, it was not all happy mermaids and fishes, there were a few kids who did not like the project. I realized that I will never please all my kids, but I was surprised that there were a handful of kids who did not like this project. Here were some of their responses:
  • "To be completely honest it was boring to me but I do have to say, I did learn some new things that I didn't once know."
  • "It was pretty bad to be honest."
  • "i dont really like working on computers . so honestly didnt like it one bit. we didnt really learn much and since i have been so busy at home that i didnt have time to get on the computer at home."
  • "I personally did not like this project we did not learn anything about math in this project and this is a math class. I like it better when we do accelerated math that's what this class is all about"
     I can't please them all. I told them, you get out of your education what you put into it. Maybe these kids just did not put the effort into it. Or maybe they did, and they really just did not like it. Hopefully as time goes on I can get all my little merpeople on board about how doing hands-on learning will really benefit them in the future. Only time will tell! 

    Overall, I enjoyed watching the kids collaboratively create and share their ideas. Personally, I got the chance to see what they thought was important in their education. I will get to apply those ideas into this new curriculum and hopefully create a system that all the merpeople will enjoy! 

   So after all of that, I will leave you all with the one question that stumped every single one of my kids, "How do I get those who just do not care to learn to learn?"

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