There are times over the past year and a half that I have been forced to look at myself through a different lens than the rest of the TEAM I am younger than most of you. For many of you, this is your second Masters; this is my first. I remember using technology when I was in middle school, and I remember the birth (per say) of Project-Based Learning. As a middle school student, in one of the best districts on Long Island, I thought it was terrible. I remember them giving us all of these assignments with little guidance, and expecting us to do mountains of work. That was back before things were really fully thought out.
Now, as a teacher in a school where nothing is ideal, I still am not a fan, but for very different reasons. I watched the three videos from Edutopia, and the second one actually made me quite angry. In that video I saw something that I never see in my classroom; I saw students who cared about their work, students who cared about the world around them, cared about how others viewed them. Last week, I gave my students an assignment that I thought they would enjoy and have very little trouble with, since they were all extremely excited about the inauguration of President Obama, I decided that we would write business letters to the President explaining why his presidency is important to us. Few of my students, could even give one reason why it was important…I had to prompt them that it was important that he was the first African American President. In this type of environment, it is very difficult for me to be excited about anything, especially something that requires the students to generate the learning. Maybe next year, Project-Based Learning will sit better with me…
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