Anatomy of an Interdisciplinary Project

From http://messiahnetwork.org/2015/04/01/puppet-show-on-sunday-april-19/ 

December 16, 2016. That's the date on this draft post I was thinking about writing. It is another of my 10 "draft" posts I have on my blog. I'm about to shift this blog over to Wordpress and away from Blogger. I have 276 blog posts altogether. Most were written over a 4 year period when I was actively writing (2011 through 2015). 

There are many things to consider if you are thinking about doing an interdisciplinary project. The following project was created for 7th grade students at a K-12 charter school in Round Rock Texas. The project included the subjects of Theater Arts, Language (French and Spanish), and IB Design.

The most obvious thing to say about the project design process, with multiple subjects, is that there has to be an initial conversation between 2 or 3 (or more) teachers who want to work together. At this school that conversation happened between the theater teacher and the design teacher a few months prior to project launch.

The theater teacher wanted to do a puppet show "towards the end of the year." That initial discussion concentrated on how the design students would be involved. Could they build scenery, or props, or puppets for the show?  The decision was made to have the design students build the puppets. During this discussion came the idea that, maybe, the language classes could be involved. All of the 7th grade students, at this school, take either French or Spanish (and it is nearly a 50/50 split). The language teachers were approached with the project idea and they were excited to be a part of it.

In one day the theater and design teachers had gone from a simple conversation to a commitment by 5 teachers. The next step was to create a rough calendar. To properly do backward design the teachers had to start with the furthest item out. Scheduling the puppet show would drive the other dates. The puppet show date led to establishing when the puppets would have to be completed. Since the students would be reading stories in their language classes and the stories, in turn, would become the basis for a script, when to start reading the stories had to be entered into the equation.

Those first steps were items that each teacher had to negotiate so that the overall project was successful. Individually, the teachers had to plan their classes so that their part of the process was completed on time with success. For example, the Design teacher wanted time to build empathy and time to start the inquiry process. It was decided that the project entry event would happen in the design class. The design teacher created a problem statement and specific product do-dates for the building of the puppets.

The theater and design teachers decided that the students would all create the same type of puppet so that they could help each other. An interesting and common (for interdisciplinary projects) issue came to light at this stage: The students who were together in design were not all together in their theater classes. And, the language classes were different from design or theater. This was important because the groups in theater class, who were presenting a specific story, all took the same language. But that didn't mean they were in the same language class period. And when it came time for building puppets none of them might be in the same design class period. It must be said that this was not a deal killer - a minor headache? Yes A stop the presses moment? Definitely not.

So, how do you drive a project that kicks off in a design class; forces students to ask their language teachers for story or poem suggestions that they can read; and ends up with scripts being written in theater so that a puppet show can happen? The answer is actually pretty simple. Once teachers have due dates on the calendar you can let the students dictate the course of the project.

In this project students arrived in their design class and were given the task of building puppets for a puppet show in their theater class. In theater class they were told that they were going to be having a puppet show where they would be writing scripts based upon either French or Spanish children's stories that they would read in their language classes. And, finally, the students were told by their language teachers that they would be selecting children's stories to read that would be used for a puppet show in theater. The time it took for all students to get an understanding of the overall scheme of the project took less than a week.

As far as deep understanding this project worked well for sustainable inquiry. Many of the students were with a group of students creating a puppet show in their theater class, but never were in class with their group members again during the day. But puppets representing each character had to be built. Scripts had to be written based upon a story that each group member was reading and, since they weren't in the same language class, they had to trust that their group members were all at a point where they understood the story well enough to have input for the script they were writing.

Students rose to the occasion. They learned about puppetry from areas all over the globe. They read for understanding in their language classes and discussed the nuances of the characters in their stories. They wrote scripts and made puppets that truly reflected the character they were in their story. And, in the end, had a fun time performing puppet shows. 

Year 4 at SXSWEdu - My Schedule (Mon/Tue) Part 1 of 2

Official Logo

This week will be the 4th edition of South By Southwest Education (SXSWedu) and I have been to every one of them. This year feels, somehow, different from those first three years and I'm hoping that is a good thing.

The first thing I noticed (about myself) is that I am planning times each day that I want to make sure I am there for and I want to attend lots of sessions. I am not able to take entire days at the conference without taking vacation days but I'll try to maximize my time.

I will still be going to school every day before heading into SXSWEdu. But I'll be getting there as early as possible. I told everyone that I will not be at school in the afternoons and I won't be back for after school meetings or helping students - not like previous years. Nope, I'm going to be in Austin every day and I'm going to stay there until I'm ready to go home. Goal number one will be to minimize feelings of guilt for not being at work. That's an impossible task - but I hope to be as guilt free as possible.

As I looked over the schedule I decided to look for specific people first. Then I went through and looked at the Session Themes. Themes that struck a cord included "Achievement Gaps and Educational Equality," Cognitive Process and Design Thinking," "DIY, Maker and Hacker," and "Gaming & Virtual Learning."  Using this process I ended up selecting 52 sessions. During some time slots, I had as many as 5 sessions at the same time! A nice problem to have.

I can remember the first year of SXSW, there were only about 5 sessions that weren't during the time I was presenting that interested me. That's another nice thing about this year - I'm not presenting so I can see whatever I want.  I also consulted EdSurge and their SXSWEdu Cheat Sheet. The main thing I found out on their site was that I was too late for signing up for their get-together on Monday night! Definitely blew it with getting signed up for social events at night. Next year, sigh....

Monday afternoon I'm focusing on Design Thinking. I've chosen to see either "Liminal Learning: Challenged-Based Design-Driven" or "In the Trenches With K-12 Design Thinking," which are next door to each other and at the same time, unfortunately.  Then I'll end the afternoon with "Getting Students Out of The Box to Redesign It."

Tuesday morning I'll be hitting sessions on gaming, cognitive processes, and closing the achievement gap. First up: "Small Town HOMAGO:Build, Make, Do, Play" which is opposite my friend Carl Hooker and his Zombies, unfortunately. It's a short session so I may have time to get over and play with the zombies. It is also in Salon C which is featuring short sessions throughout so I may just stay and see "Does Engagement Really Matter." Either way I'll just hang out, mess around, and geek out.

Tuesday afternoon I'll start with 2 hours of "Probing Needs and Prototyping Solutions: DT4EdTech ." It is opposite another design thinking session that has a summary that is incoherent - not sure how it made it through the panel picker! The folks on the "probing needs" panel can tell me what they are going to talk about and I know one of them.  

At 1:30 I am really torn. There's "Saving America's Black Boys"and "Failing to Learn: Building Resilient Mindsets." Both resonate with me and so it will probably come down to which one has a seat for me.  But I'll end the day with "Playful Calculation = Design Creativity."

Tuesday night I'll be attending the Advisory Board Mixer - one of the perks to being on the advisory board. I know I'll be exhausted heading home that night but there's still Wednesday and Thursday to go. More about that in part two.

A Chance of a Lifetime

Student Photo MNTHS

The fact I got to see President Obama was not a given. I'm not teaching at Manor New Tech (MNTHS) any more. Yes, I do a lot with PBL in our district but the fact is I am not a teacher at the school being visited by the President.  But Steve Zipkes, the MNTHS Principal, told me his goal was to have all of the former teachers at the campus when Mr. Obama was there.

Finally, Tuesday night, I received an email from the White House advance team representative that I would be part of a group of "Volunteers" and I would have a meeting on Wednesday to get more information.

Wednesday afternoon there were about a dozen of us from around the district who were given assignments for the big day. At the beginning of that meeting we were told the layout and we knew that some of us might end up in the cafeteria where there would be a live stream of the speech. Again, I knew that I might just be there and not get to see the man in person. But I was asked to be at the entrance making sure students, staff, and guests entered in an orderly fashion. And I was told "when they close up you can go into the gymnasium for the speech." 

As it turned out things went incredibly smooth and about an hour before the arrival we had closed up and I was inside tweeting and talking with many of our guests. Being "in the loop" I knew when the motorcade had arrived and that he had entered the main part of the building to see the student presentations. He was free to spend as much time as he needed so when he hadn't arrived in about 20 minutes I knew the students were getting maximum time with their President.

During the waiting time I started getting tweets and texts from friends around the country who were watching the live White House feed, online.  They could see me and all of my actions so we started having some fun with strategic hand gestures and comments about the brightness of my bald spot.  Then a really cool thing happened.

They had anticipated almost 200 press for the event and there was plenty of room in the gym for that number of people. The advance team wanted it to look full and so they invited the entire student body to come in and see the speech live.  It was a little cozy but as the advance team had said, "we need it to be crowded with lots of happy cheering people."

Before the President came into the gym, he was introduced by a senior at MNTHS, Tevyn Washington.  Tevyn was one of my favorite students and his introduction was well thought out and moving. Listening to his speech caused tears to well up in my eyes for the 2nd time that day.

The president's speech started out, as was expected, very presidential but he quickly got to talking about what he had seen during his tour of the school and he included the sound bytes that had been provided for him. It was a pretty emotional time for those of us who had been at the school for a while. His entire speech can be found here. I thought I could keep it together, but he still managed to get me teared up a couple of times.

Thanks to the military I've been in the presence of Presidents,Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State and Secretaries of Defense. But once I had left service I really didn't picture being able to see the President. Especially in a small town in central Texas.

Mr. Obama spoke the truth yesterday. He didn't embellish his remarks and his speech writer didn't make up statistics.  We are doing good things in this district. We feel that we have such a long road to go to get where we want to be. We see the blemishes. We know where we are lacking. But for one day a school district and a town could stand together and beam with pride as the whole nation recognized the efforts of some of their own. It was a day none of us will ever forget.

Fighting the Education Reform Battle

A Guest Post by Steven Zipkes, founding Principal/Director at Manor New Technology High School in Manor Texas

(Originally posted on Facebook - February 20, 2013 )

    My head hurts from constantly fighting the educational reform battle. It is not about extending the school day, or mandatory Saturday school, nor selecting the "right"students or same sex school or AP courses, or wearing uniforms, or the other gazillion programs out there! It's about delivering authentic and engaging, yes engaging, curriculum that gets students excited about their learning.

   I often wonder if it's really about change that meets the students' needs or perpetuating profitable and even so-called "non profit" programs. How naive I consider myself sometimes. Do we ever really listen to what successful companies are looking for in potential employees?!! Really, all I hear is blah, blah, blah from talking head, non-practitioners, and practicing pretenders who say "we know best." I say, try talking to the students and the businesses, not someone trying to make a name for themselves for ulterior motives.

   By the way, there is no such thing as PBL's - especially with "unit." Can you say substitution for textbooks? Teaching through Project Based Instruction is not about the end-product but about the learning that takes place throughout the project and the scaffolding within the project. Finally, PBL is NOT STEM and STEM is NOT PBL. Project Based Learning is a process and modality of instruction. It requires a pedagogical shift in the delivery of instruction by the practitioner. STEM can, and should, use PBL as the modality of instruction as well as integrating content and the use of assessment of 21st Century Skills in every project. By doing this, a practitioner is better prepared to create deeper learning opportunities for transferring knowledge to application.

    Get down to 21st Century Skills (such as collaboration, communication, problem solving, research, and work ethic) and deeper learning of transferring knowledge to application through Project Based Instruction. That is the path! It is really not rocket science. Oh, but it's not your idea or how you would do it or how can we profit. Real educators, parents, and students need to unite and say enough is enough. Experimenting with our children - just to line your pockets or make your name. Let's create real and meaningful systemic change once and for all and do away with all of the talking heads and rhetoric.

    Our children are too valuable for the success of our country and their future. Does anyone agree with me? Or am I on my own Manor New Technology Island?

    Stepping down from my soapbox now. Have a great day.

Writing in a STEM Classroom

http://www.flickr.com/photos/us-pacific-command/

Yesterday my students took final exams in two Project Lead the Way classes:  Introduction to Engineering Design (IED) and Digital Electronics (DE).  Their exams consisted of a writing prompt with the requirement that they write at least one page, they use introductory and concluding paragraphs, and that they use proper spelling and grammar.

For the IED exam they were told to underline the steps in the 12-step design process, underline key terms in the process of Reverse Engineering, and underline the words Planned Obsolescence and Perceived Obsolescence when they were used.

I could have easily had them do a multiple choice test on processes in CAD programming, steps in the design process, and the difference between Planned and Perceived Obsolescence.  But what would that have told be about their real understanding of these terms?

Too often, as STEM teachers, we get to hide behind solving problems and we let the writing and reading part of education be allocated to the English teachers.  We forget that we have college degrees and we had to write papers and we had to read A LOT in college.  Our students need writing and reading preparation so they can go to the best science and engineering schools and do well.

(Insert Sea Story here: )  I remember being a Main Propulsion Assistant, in the Navy, and having the Chief Engineer always (not once or twice but always) ask me what the tech manual said about the problem we were having with the pumps, turbines, or other mechanical equipment in our engine room. I would have to bring the tech manual and I was expected to have read the manual, understood what was being said, and be able to explain it in layman's terms to the Captain. This was true even though I wasn't the person doing the repairs.  It was my people doing the repairs and I was expected to understand the problems.  If I weren't a good reader I would have never made it in that job.

And so, whenever possible, I intend to be a better teacher by having my students read and write.  Not having them write in every class is a disservice to their future.  The English teachers can work on making sure they understand the nuances of style or various grammar rules.   We can be the ones who make sure they are practicing their skills.

(Insert first year teacher story from 1994 here: )  At a faculty meeting during my first year of teaching we were discussing having students write more across all of their courses.  The curriculum person stood in front of us and told us "of course, if you aren't an English teacher you can't grade them on grammar and spelling."  My hand went up faster than a SM-2ER missile.  "If some kid gives me a paper that is written poorly it is going to be marked up like a bloody mess!"  (That was before we became a gentler profession and we got rid of red pens for grading.)

We are professionals.  We have accumulated, in most cases, multiple hours of classes that required us to write and to be graded on our writing.  Yes, some teachers are NOT great writers but that doesn't mean they can't demand good writing from their students.  Make your students write.  You owe it to them.