"It's up to you." I have found myself saying that to a certain class a lot lately. After reading Josh Stumpenhorst's blog and following him on Twitter, I began to think. I wanted to make my class as student centered as possible, so I jumped in. I provided the students with learning objectives and turned them loose so to speak. We are studying the Civil War era so I broke it into three parts, Causes of the War, Events and People During the War, and Reconstruction. We started with a pre-quiz to give me some statistical base to see growth (I also gave this to another class who is not participating in this "project" so I can compare at the end). Since then my students have been planning and researching. One of the biggest complaints I have had as a young teacher is that students want things spoon fed to them. I can't tell you how many times in the last 2 weeks I have had students ask how should we put this together? Or what should this part look like? My response lately has been "It's up to you." And I think they are starting to figure it out, at first they were frustrated by my responses, but now they nod, smile and go back to their groups. Many of them are meeting after school at friends houses or the library. One of the things I have implemented is we have weekly meetings where I have been talking to the students about how to make sure that they are making progress.
It hasn't been all roses though. Many of my students know they are being unproductive but fail to change. I truly believe that many of them have been told to sit in their seats and be quiet for so long that they struggle when you put them in a group to realize that talking about their boyfriend/girlfriend etc. does nothing to advance the project. For example, one group mentioned to me that they struggled to accomplish things when they sat next to a certain group. The problem is the next day where did they sit? Right by the same group, and I let them go because I want them to realize what they are doing. When I noticed again that they were not being productive I simply asked them why they were sitting by the same group they told me yesterday they were distracted by, they didn't have much of a response.
Over all this has been a great experience so far. We have only scratched the surface to this point, but I hope at the end the positives outweigh the negatives and there is true growth to be seen. I want my students to stop looking at me for answers, and instead look at me with questions to explore. Hopefully this experience will be a great one, with students growing in their understanding of the Civil War but also as thinkers.
