{"id":449,"date":"2013-04-25T21:45:11","date_gmt":"2013-04-25T21:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/wp\/?p=449"},"modified":"2013-04-28T17:12:09","modified_gmt":"2013-04-28T17:12:09","slug":"creating-a-conspiracy-in-the-pbl-classroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/2013\/04\/25\/creating-a-conspiracy-in-the-pbl-classroom\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating a Conspiracy in the PBL Classroom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Any <em>Mad Men<\/em> fans out there?\u00a0 I just love some of the characters and the struggles they put themselves through.\u00a0 In one episode from season 5, called \u201cSignal 30,\u201d Lane Pryce needs to take some clients out to dinner and Roger Sterling is giving him some advice on how to woo them to sign a contract with Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.\u00a0 Since he is not an account man, Lane is nervous about landing the account.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0_DjuleHPvk\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Roger:\u00a0 And then it\u2019s kind of like being on a date.<\/p>\n<p>Lane:\u00a0 Flattery, I suppose\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Roger:\u00a0 Within reason, but I find it best to smile and sit there like you\u2019ve got no place to go and just let \u2018em talk.\u00a0 Somewhere in the middle of the entr\u00e9e, they\u2019ll throw out something revealing and you want to wait \u2018til dessert to pounce on it. You know, let him know you\u2019ve got the same problem he has.\u00a0 Whatever it is, and then you\u2019re in a conspiracy &#8211; the basis of a quote \u201cfriendship\u201d.\u00a0 Then you whip out the form.<\/p>\n<p>Lane:\u00a0 What if I don\u2019t have the same problem?<\/p>\n<p>Roger:\u00a0 It\u2019ll probably be something like he drinks too much, he gambles&#8230;I once went on a five minute tear about how my mother loved my father more than me and I can assure you, that\u2019s impossible.<\/p>\n<p>Lane:\u00a0 Very good then, and if for some reason he\u2019s more reserved?<\/p>\n<p>Roger:\u00a0 You just reverse it \u2013 feed him your own personal morsel.<\/p>\n<p>Lane:\u00a0 Oh I see.<\/p>\n<p>Roger: (getting up to leave) That\u2019s it, get your answers, be nice to the waiter and don\u2019t let him near the check.<\/p>\n<p>My husband and I watched this episode about the same time I was having a great deal of resistance in my class to PBL.\u00a0 I was talking to my husband about how to get students to buy into the notion of learning for the sake of learning where everywhere else in their lives what measures their learning are their grades.\u00a0 Why would I expect anything different from them if this is the culture they were brought up in?\u00a0 They depend on their grades to get them into a good college and if their grades are not up to a certain standard, they will not \u201cmeasure up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I get this question all the time from other teachers \u2013 about \u00a0how to motivate students to find the love of learning and the interest in problems when they do not necessary know the solution methods to find them.\u00a0 I usually tell them the same things \u2013 talking about the values of the class, grading class contribution with a viewable rubric, \u00a0grading their metacognitive journal writing, rewarding them with an interesting relationship with a great teacher\u2026OK that might be pushing it.<\/p>\n<p>However, this year is different.\u00a0 I am having the hardest time trying to let them know what I want from them.\u00a0 They do the homework, try their best, write down notes, but for some reason it feels different.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost as if there\u2019s this wall between them and me and I don\u2019t know how to get them to see my side.\u00a0 I have had this problem with students in the past, but usually with a whole class.\u00a0 Some of them blatantly are interrupting each other and others are obviously ignoring each other.<\/p>\n<p>Then my husband says, \u201cMaybe it\u2019s like the conspiracy.\u201d\u00a0 I said, \u201cWhat?\u201d He said,\u201d You know, what Roger was talking about on <em>Mad Men<\/em>.\u00a0 Now, Roger Sterling is no saint (those of you who watch the show know this all too well) and I usually take what he says with a grain of salt.\u00a0 I also would not ever consider taking advice from him, especially about teaching, but I allowed my husband to continue.\u00a0 He said maybe what I had to do was build up the conspiracy that Roger was talking about.\u00a0 I had a real problem with that because I am so committed to relational pedagogy that there\u2019s no way I could lie to or mislead a student about their learning.\u00a0 But that\u2019s not what he really meant.<\/p>\n<p>I suddenly realized that what had happened was I was teaching a curriculum that<em> I<\/em> didn\u2019t even buy into.\u00a0 I had just finished teaching them matrices and matrix operations with some problems that I had written, and it went very well.\u00a0 However, in the end I did have to do Cramer\u2019s Rule and determinants.\u00a0 I tried motivating the problems about determinants with the area of a parallelogram, which kept them interested for a while, but in the end, with a 3&#215;3 it was just here\u2019s the way to do it.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure that I could\u2019ve expected them to have enough prior knowledge to derive the formula for finding a determinant of a 3&#215;3.\u00a0 As much as I tried to cover it up with problem-based learning, it was still a curriculum that is antiquated and not necessarily what I felt they should be doing and learning.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t hide it any longer.<\/p>\n<p>But we\u2019re caught aren\u2019t we?\u00a0 Do we change the whole system \u2013 college prep curriculum, SAT required math, college expectations \u2013 and if so how do we do that? (see <a title=\"Nils Ahbel Home page\" href=\"http:\/\/ahbel.com\" target=\"_blank\">ahbel.com<\/a> for a <a title=\"It's time for a change\" href=\"http:\/\/beta.aalf.org\/blog.php\/nahbel2\/view?PostID=414\" target=\"_blank\">great article<\/a> on this and a keynote address called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rOhhAFSsu_g&amp;feature=youtu.be\">Reflections on a 119 year old curricullum<\/a>!)\u00a0 Do we move beyond the required standardized testing material and allow our students to see mathematics the way we see it?\u00a0 Yes, that\u2019s the conspiracy \u2013 that\u2019s what my husband was talking about.\u00a0 When kids complain to me, I will \u201csmile and sit there while they talk\u201d knowing that I\u2019m going to try to get something that we have in common.\u00a0 \u201cDo you hate solving a system of three equations with three unknowns with a determinant? Oh yeah, I did too in high school.\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t it be great if we could do something else?\u00a0 What else should we do?\u00a0 Let me find some other problems that might be interesting.\u201d\u00a0 We have the same problem (literally and figuratively), now we\u2019re on the same playing field having similar motivating factors.<\/p>\n<p>And you know what?\u00a0 I don\u2019t think it would be the end of the world if they\u2019re not revealing and you reversed it.\u00a0 We are allowed to say to them that we don\u2019t understand why we are still teaching this and these would be my reasons for taking it out of the curriculum \u2013 part of your own personal morsel.\u00a0 It might actually bring you closer as a class and have you talking about how your hands are tied and we have to get through this \u201ctogether.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, there are little tricks that can be learned and carrots that can be used to get students to do what you want them to do, but in PBL, that\u2019s not the point.\u00a0 There is very little for them to mimic because it is based on their prior knowledge.\u00a0 They are the ones who need to move the curriculum forward.\u00a0 So in a nutshell,<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Take action &#8211; Get to problems in order for students to start feeling empowered and active in class.\u00a0 Once they see that they are capable of a great deal on their own, it is amazing what they can accomplish.<\/li>\n<li>Create relationships \u2013 be sure that you are being reciprocal in your attempts at problems and valuing theirs.\u00a0 The concept of Relational Trust and Authority are huge parts of a PBL pedagogy (Boaler, Bingham)<\/li>\n<li>But make sure that you are at least somewhat in control in the end because we are, at least for now, still responsible for making sure that some understanding of what we might consider unnecessary skills, for their next courses or future use.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>As Roger said, \u201cGet your answers, be nice to the waiter and don\u2019t let \u2018em near the check.\u201d\u00a0 Create that conspiracy.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=SchettinoPBL\" class=\"twitter-share-button\" data-size=\"large\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Any Mad Men fans out there?\u00a0 I just love some of the characters and the struggles they put themselves through.\u00a0 In one episode from season 5, called \u201cSignal 30,\u201d Lane Pryce needs to take some clients out to dinner and Roger Sterling is giving him some advice on how to woo them to sign a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,11,17,6],"tags":[26,25],"class_list":["post-449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-in-the-classroom","category-other-resources","category-problem-based-learning","tag-curriculum","tag-motivation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":453,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions\/453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelschettino.com\/dev0418\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}