What I learned from The “Apple” Challenge

I wrote four pages mulling over this topic but they read with a rather nasty tone, so I have condensed my thoughts to these four main, hopefully non passive-aggressive, points.

1. Collaborating with a for-profit business about curriculum was an interesting experience. I don’t particularly recommend it simply because in education teachers already have multiple bosses (students, department heads, school principals, parents etc.) and they don’t need another one who a) has interests independent of serving students as well as possible and b) is not present to adjust their demands when what they ask for is unreasonable. The next time Apple Inc. invites me to try their experiment, I will do it on my own timeline or I will say no thanks.

2. Collaborating with other teachers across disciplines is a wonderful professional development opportunity. However, it doesn’t make sense to engage in this illuminating yet time-consuming process unless you have the same students who will make connections between the thread started in Biology class and continued in English class. The block schedule at my school minimizes the chances of overlap and makes me question if this system is really the best schedule for student learning.

3. We need teachers. (What a relief!). Part of the Challenge Based learning model appears to suggest that teachers need to stop lesson planning so much and get out of the way. “Hand over the reigns to students,” CBL suggests, “and they’ll teach themselves!”. I was optimistic about this at first but discovered that the reality is that no, they won’t. It isn’t because of a lack of drive; I think it’s probably just a frontal lobe that needs to grow. Freshman aren’t there yet: they still need us to point them in the right direction, show them some cool examples they couldn’t find on their own, teach them the basics, and then invite them to impress us. Otherwise they sit there staring at one another for days.

4. Group work rocks. Students pay more attention to one another than they do to anything else and group work can steer that energy toward self-reflection. One student reflected after the whole project debacle came to an end:

During the course of the past three weeks or so, I had to overcome a lot, personally. It was very hard for me to keep my cool when other people in my group weren't cooperating, or if we were having communication problems. It was hard for me to be able to not take all the work myself, but to be able to trust the other people in our group to do some work as well. I was personally able to overcome this when people in our group really showed an interest in the project and wanted to help out, which was when I was able to hand over some responsibility to them.

That’s neat. So she learned more about herself than she did about English class content. Am I satisfied with that as a teacher? No.

In closing, I must say that this project left me with a lot of questions and one that even related to my identity as a teacher: How can I strike a balance between content-driven classes and experiential learning? Why do I so enjoy leaping at the risky, uncertain, potentially disastrous projects instead of just using my office-mates lesson plans that are tried and true? If nothing else happens in my classroom, what is the one thing I can’t do without? The creation of a class culture? The ability to use discussion techniques? The development of an appreciation for poetry? The proper use of a hyphen?

Each teacher answers these questions for themselves and it will take me a few more years before I am confident in my own responses.