I love using Project-Based Learning (PBL) in the classroom. There are about a zillion reasons why and a host of research exists on why using PBL is simply, well… good teaching. No need for me to really explain the sound theory behind it all right here. It would take too long.

PBL rocks! Let’s leave it at that.

On a practical level I find that using PBL as the cornerstone for ending the school year is especially effective in allowing me to achieve many of my objectives for this time of year.

Why? Because I want my students, in no particular order to…

• finish strong
• work hard
• demonstrate evidence of their learning
• have fun
• stretch themselves
• create something tangible
• collaborate and innovate
• feel as if their time is a valuable commodity in their lives, something not to be frittered away but rather be valued and respected.
• and on and on. (I fear I am about to digress into edu-babble, politically trite buzzword speak if I continue on.)

Of course, I want most of these things during the course of the year as well. However, having to bow at the altar of NCLB, ETS and their bubble tests while making sure to cover a host of “other things” that are not as PBL friendly for ELA teachers (like punctuating appositive phrases and teaching parallelism within sentences) well… as Mick Jagger once said, “You can’t always get what you want.”

So essentially, before my classes break for the summer, I ask my students to “step up” bigger than they ever have before through the creation of a “project”.

I preface my assignment with a little speech about how, at this very moment, my kids are most probably at the height of their aptitudes. They have never had more schooling, they’ve never been more worldly, they’ve never had more experiences, they’ve never been more ready to deliver something truly great. (Obviously, when dealing with 14-17 year olds, this can almost always be said; they are perpetually at their “height” in a way. Once you get old like me, however, you can’t always say you are “better” now than you ever were before because in 1986 I was a much better basketball player than I am today. However, as English students, they are often “better” than they were two, three or even five years ago. Thus this little warm-up speech.)

All in all it boils down to Envision, Plot, Refine, Build, Tinker, Reflect, Re-Tinker, Finalize, Present.

Ending the year with my students having created “SOMETHING” is my plan.

What is that SOMETHING? It’s really up to the teacher. From expository projects to poetry units to biographical studies and on and on and on, a host of truly great ideas are available.

PBL can be high tech… or not.
PBL can be assigned to both individuals or groups.
PBL can take the form of old school oratory or new wave multi-media.
PBL can be so, so, so many things.

All in all, when it comes to the end of the year, I want my students to have to climbed a final mountain, ascended to a new plateau, and really pushed it one last time before our moments together in my room have passed.

PBL offers me that opportunity. Showing fluffy movies, merely biding your time til the year is over, counting down the days is a freakin’ waste.

Use the time. It’s life’s true currency.

(FYI, I am going to host a free webinar on Finishing Strong next week (May 19th from 6:30 – 7:30 EST. If interested, you can sign up here.)

We are always teaching our students. Even when we are not teaching, we are teaching our students. In fact, when we are not teaching is probably when we are most teaching because kids often learn by adult example.

So what is the example you set from the front of the room?

It’s pretty well known that scores of secondary educators in this country will be showing fluff movies over the course of the last few weeks of the school year.

Doesn’t that teach kids a whole lotta stuff we’d really rather not have them learn?

BTW, I am not talking about showing a film like Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful to cap a unit on Holocaust studies. (Trust me, I love the cinema.) But I am quite wary of showing The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift… in Math Class!

So let’s look at some of the things kids learn when two teachers approach the end of the year from different perspectives.

Teacher X (TX) shows fluff movies and does silly worksheets because they are counting down the days to summer and just can’t wait to head for the door.

Teacher Y (TY) works ‘em to the end trying to make the most out of classroom minutes over the course of the last few weeks of school but yes, still likes the idea of summer and is excited to take a break as well.

Things that TX is teaching by means of personal example:

• I don’t care if you learn anything else.
• This school doesn’t have the means to control me and prevent me from having a bad attitude/shortchanging you. (“Welcome to the real world, punk!”)
• Professionalism when you are a teacher, matters little.
• I only pay lip service to the phrase, “Your education matters.”
• Who says surfin’ ebay doesn’t pay? I am collecting full wages right now.
• You’ll be out of my hair soon enough.

Things that TY is teaching by means of personal example:

• I don’t just talk the talk up here, I walk the walk and in life, you’ll come to discover, this matters a great deal.
• It doesn’t matter whether or not this school has the means to control me… I am still going to carry myself as if I were a professional and do my job in the best manner I know how – as I have been asking you to do all school year long.
• Habits of quality are not faucets to be turned on and off. You can’t just flip a switch in life. If you want to be excellent at something, you must always strive to be excellent – otherwise you will not be.
• Learning doesn’t end so why would you ever assume there’s nothing more we should try to tackle in class before we take a summer break?

Obviously, there are so many more things we could add to each of these lists but what seems self evident is that if we really want to forge better character in our kids, we have to exemplify it ourselves via our deeds and not our language.

Phoning it in doesn’t mean you are not teaching; you are teaching things most parents would probably rather not have their kids learn from you.

(FYI, I am going to host a free webinar on Finishing Strong next week (May 19th from 6:30 – 7:30 EST. If interested, you can sign up here.)

One of the reasons I consider it so important for teachers to try and finish the school year in a “strong” fashion is simply out of self-preservation. The fact is, teaching is tough. And the year is long and hard. And we are not always at our best.

Plus, when you add in a dose of the dire news we are all inevitably going to be reading/hearing about for the upcoming 2010/2011 school year (for example, I just heard rumors we might go as high as 43 to 1 on the student teacher ratio due to budget cuts on my campus), you can get demoralized.

And feel disempowered.

But in a way, this sentiment is an illusion. Sure, there are many things we cannot control in our teaching universe… but there are many things we can as well.

Choose to focus on the things that are within your realm of being able to control. It’s one recipe for staving off the wolves of educational despair.

When you strap it up and work your butt off bell to bell all the way to end of the year, you feel a certain personal dignity that can’t be stolen away from you. And when you work in a chaotic, frenzied, dysfunctional world where up is down and buffonishness trumps common sense, feeling as if you are making a positive contribution matters, despite the events going on all around you.

It actually matters a lot. In fact, it might be all the difference in the world.

Now of course, we owe it to the kids to give them our all, but in reality, a lot of teachers feel dumped on by their districts these days and as a result, they often passive-aggressively take out their own frustrations with their superiors on those that are most easily within lashing-out distance.

i.e. the kids.

My district pink-slipped me? Well, screw them… I ain’t teaching crap for the rest of this year. What are they going to do, fire me?

-Uhm, aren’t you forgetting the needs of the students?
-Aren’t you forgetting your own sense of professionalism?
-Aren’t you forgetting that you are still being paid for a job and just because you can shirk you duties doesn’t mean that you should shirk your duties.

As this year winds down, a lot of “stuff” is going to bubble up. My feeling is that the best defense to preserve your sanity, your dignity and your own personal sense of self can begins with a strong finish to the end of the school year. Refuse to be one of those teachers that just phone it in because at the end of the day, heck, at the end of your life, you’ll be able to look back and at least know that when it came time hey, at least you did what you could.

Trust me, there’s more juice in the fruit of students to be squeezed and wasting it, well… the knowledge that you’ve done so can wear on your soul.

(FYI, I am going to host a free webinar on Finishing Strong next week (on May 19th from 6:30 – 7:30 EST. If interested, you can sign up here.)

A common mistake I see with many, many educators is that when the end of the school year peeks its head on the school horizon, they begin to – how should I put this – well, they begin to “kind of coast”. They take it easy. They don’t stress, they don’t fret, they do not push the pedal to the metal but instead, they go into “Countdown mode”.

It’s educational quicksand and my warning to you is: Stay Away!

I’ll explain why. But first, some backstory: this educational insight hit me in the bathroom. (I’ll spare you the potty humor right now though, let’s admit it, I am really, really tempted to crack a bodily function joke at this moment.)

See, there’s a guy I see in the restroom practically every day… and every day for the past week, instead of greeting me with his usual, “Hello, Alan,” he has greeted me with, “Only 25 more days, Alan” – and then he adds a beaming smile.

“Only 24 more days, Alan.” (Beaming smile.)

“Only 23 more days, Alan.” (Beaming smile.)

Truly, it’s a great exercise for discussing the literary device of perspective. To this teacher, he sees the dwindling days as an exciting time, as if the torment of teaching will be over oh-so-soon for him and the joys of watching re-runs of Dancing with the Stars, or whatever he does, will begin in earnest. (Look, maybe he he’s a championship knitter over the summer, what do I know?)

The bigger point is that his beaming smile and countdown greeting are not filling me with glee but rather, they are making me tense. (I’ve written about this feeling before.) I have stuff to do, still. I have books I still want to read, projects I still want to tackle and on and on and on.

There’s still so much more I didn’t get to!

Obviously, our classes must reflect our varying dispositions. His class, I am assuming, operates at a leisurely pace whereby the students are, like the teacher, most probably biding their time.

My class operates as if, well, the classroom minutes matter. That’s a choice.

Ya know, we complain so much as teachers about all the stuff that isn’t right, that’s going wrong, that’s being cut or under-funded and so on and yet, here it is that we still have a patch of open road and some teachers are squandering their opportunity to do more, be more, teach more and so on, while others are not.

Really, the way I see it, there is only one way to conduct yourself as a classroom educator this time of year: be the type of teacher you would want your owns kids to have at the front of their class. It’s one of the best litmus tests you can apply to your own personal, self-reflective, professional assessment.

And if I would want my own kids in a class where the teacher is still demanding thoughtful, productive, hard work, then that’s what you yourself should still be doing. (And what parent wouldn’t want this?)

Really, why do the classroom minutes of late May hold any less value than those of early October? Of course, I am not saying don’t have fun. I have tons of fun. (But I do in October as well. Fun and rigor are not mutually exclusive to high quality schooling.)

Additionally, let’s be honest… I love summer, too. Really, I LOVE IT! (Maybe even more than the other teacher does.) But summer is not here yet… and there’s miles to go before we sleep.

(Hey, now that I think of it, maybe I can squeeze in a little extra Frost poetry this year. And connect it to this great article I read on Steve Jobs talking about how even though he is a billionaire on top of the world, he is still as driven as ever… because he feels, I assume, there are still “miles to go before he sleeps”, right? Ah, the possibilities.)

So much vibrant stuff is still available to do… with so little time so please, use the opportunities. It’s the stuff of which our careers are made… and our kids deserve it.

(FYI, I am going to host a free webinar on Finishing Strong next week (May 19th from 6:30 – 7:30 EST. If interested, you can sign up here.)

Recently, I perused the top MOST VIEWED stories on the website of the Los Angeles Time. Here’s what they were…

1. Nigeria’s shaky balance of power takes a hit as new president is sworn in
2. Legislation proposed to raise maximum fines on U.S. auto industry for violating safety rules
3. Grisly Corvette crash in Van Nuys; 4 killed
4. Death sentence for gunman in 2008 Mumbai attack
5. Russian warship opens fire, takes oil tanker back from pirates
6. Russian warship opens fire, takes oil tanker back from pirates
7. Gunman sentenced to hang for Mumbai attack that killed 166
8. Mumbai gunman sentenced to death
9. Russian special forces rappel onto oil tanker, arrest pirates
10. Widow is overwhelmed by grief

And what do they all have in common?

Fear. Or tragedy. Pain and hurt. Blood.

What’s that old news saying: “If it bleeds, it leads!”

But this was the MOST VIEWED section, not the section the editors chose to highlight – these were the stories the viewers most frequently selected to read.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Which came first, the disproportionate amount of “news” stories that are rooted in negativity or the people’s mass desire to read “news” stories that are rooted in negativity?

I am often aggravated that I do not hear more good stories about all the fine work teachers are doing on the news. But when educators screw up, they splash it as far and as wide as they can.

Once, a journalist explained this to me by telling me, “It’s not news when you do your job; it’s news when you don’t.”

Cause that is, after all, what it certainly seems the people want to read.

I just got a message from Arne Duncan. An email actually. Here’s what he sent to me:

As our nation observes Teacher Appreciation Week, I am pleased to send this message to recent Teachers of the Year, to make sure that you know how much we at the U.S. Department of Education value your extraordinary commitment and service to our nation’s students.

All teachers deserve honor and thanks on a daily basis for all they do to nurture their students’ academic and personal growth, help them to achieve, and prepare them for the future.

Teachers of the Year admirably represent the entire teaching profession, and I am especially grateful for the leadership and good examples they provide.

I salute you for all of your accomplishments, and I thank you for your enduring dedication to America’s students.

–Arne Duncan

At first, I thought it was a hoax. I thought I was going to open the email and POOF! my computer was going to disintegrate while an evil teen cackled from half-way across the world screaming, “I hate and am not liking subject verb agreement always!”

But alas, it really was from Mr. Duncan. And then, once my initial cynicism subsided, I realized, “Hey, that was pretty cool. Nice gesture, Mr. Secretary of Education.”

I mean the guy obviously can’t be everywhere doing everything trying to meet everyone. But at least he wrote me an email.

Or had a secretary write it.

Or ordered a secretary to have an intern write it.

Or ordered a secretary to have an intern who had a mother who was once a teacher write it. (Look at the proper use of those apostrophes… you know that if you’re gonna send an email out to teachers, as Secretary of Education, you better get both Strunk and White to sign off on that bad boy! However, I think I could take issue with his parallelism if I were to get persnickety but alas, he’s a busy guy so I am not gonna hit him with the fine tooth comb.)

Arne, I agree with you on one hell of a big point: our schools need to change. And I do salute the fact that you are a person who believes that if you’re going to make an educational omelet, you gotta break some schoolhouse eggs. (BTW, if you ever need a fire and brimstone speechwriter, I can be bought!)

Now of course, I might quibble over the eggs you are choosing to smash – or not choosing, as well (like bubble tests!) – yet, at the end of the day, I think the jury is still out on you. Being that you’re still relatively new at the job, and still learning the ropes, I think you deserve more time before you become the next marshmallow on my blogfire.

And you’ve done some good already as well. Those coupla billion you scrounged up to keep the universe afloat while Wall Street was playing 3 card monty with our national banking system really did prevent a calamity.

Yet, we ain’t out of the woods yet. Please don’t forget that.

All in all, thanks for the note last week – and right back at ya, Dude! Teacher of the Year wnners do work hard. But please know that there are hundreds of thousands of teachers in California and millions of teachers across the country that would really like to feel your love as well.

Now sure, some teachers stink and should be run from the profession, but their numbers are infinitesimal as compared to the number of those who simply do right by America. Remember, more time out of the Beltway will always be a good thing to show you just that. And if you want to come to Lynwood, we’d love to have you.

Oh yeah, feel free to bring Barry, too. It’ be a genuine honor.

Great news today!! I was just notified that my most biggest writing project ever, was named a Finalist for the 2010 Association of Educational Publishers Distinguished Achievement Awards in the category of Reading and Language Arts.

I really only started writing educational curriculum for one reason: I hated the fact that I was a perpetual complainer about all the junk that was out there being peddled to my school and my students.

And living in a world where I saw my school – and so many others – get, pardon my French, “fleeced” by educational publishers that weren’t providing what I felt needed to be provided in order to 1) effectively reach our modern students and 2) smartly empower today’s teachers with the tools they really needed to be effective professionals was driving me bonkers.

And the prices that these folks were charging? Jeez, it made my head spin. (Thus the French term above). I always felt it could be done better.

But then I had to face the facts. If I really thought it could be done better, I would have to prove it. It’s easy to talk and complain. It’s harder to actually do something about it.

And so I decided to take a run at educational publishing myself.

When publishers found out that I was going to put together a curriculum of best practices from my own classroom that pretty much used all the strategies, methodologies, insights and tools I had developed over the years and years I’d spent as a classroom educator (and as avid student of schooling itself) it landed me a bunch of meetings. Everyone was interested in working with me on this endeavor.

My literary agent, however, thought I was a bit nuts.

“Why take a detour off of a great – and growing – career as a YA novelist to go write material for teachers? The work is going to be three times as hard and the money a lot less?”

Now my agent is great. Best professional partner I have in many, many respects. However, when he heard my reasoning (i.e. I wanted to “give back”, I thought I could make a real difference, people asked me all the time for materials as to how I do what I do to reap the results I get with my kids) he said, “Ya know what, you won me over. I can see you feel passionate and think this is going to be something meaningful and special. Let’s do it! Let’s see if we can’t change, or at least try to change a world that has become fossilized.”

And so, of all the publishers available to me, I struck a deal with a young and hungry group over at Haights Cross and Recorded Books. What they lacked in tremendous size, they made up for in desire, smarts and talent. They let me captain the ship, they worked hard to provide all the resources I’d need to produce something smashing, and they put the pedal to the metal from the boardroom on down. Essentially, they gave me their full support. (And who doesn’t want/need that?)

What I was able to publish with them is, what I feel, the best teaching I have ever done. The BookJam is my response to my own complaining.

And though it’s still less than a year old – and there are more phases planned in the project (I just finished the Poetry Jam and The Classics Jam meaning 7 BookJams are already out while 4 more BookJams are being written by me this summer for release in the next 6-8 months) well… how cool is it that the Association of American Publishers just gave me a little love for my efforts.

So what’s the lesson? (I am always looking for lessons.) As teachers, we are not as disempowered as we think we are to bring about change. I rolled up my shirts sleeves and got to work.

Our schools are starving for more of us to take the lead. Science teachers, math teachers, history, PE, art, music, Special Ed and on and on and on.

We can do better.

Or kids deserve better.

The status quo is not working.

Being named a finalist for such a prestigious award, what’s it really mean? It means I now have the credibility to encourage other educators to quit looking to politicians and administrators with political agendas for the classroom answers you need.

Take the reins and have at it folks… you have no idea where it will lead.

I didn’t.

Look, I love kids. I have ‘em, I teach ‘em and I even make funny face at ‘em when they peep over the seats at me on airplanes and in restaurants.

Like I said, I love kids.

But crying babies on an airplane require a set of uniform rules that smartly and compassionately address the problem of negatively impacting the flying experience of other paying passengers.

From domestic travel to trans-Atlantic journeys, here are my Top 5 Tips on How to Handle a Crying Baby on an Airplane.

1. Stuff ‘em in the overhead luggage bin. Carry-on luggage placed on the seat won’t make a peep and a closed overhead bin is sure to muffle their annoying wails.
2. Fill their mouths with tough to chew objects. For example, no one reads the InFlight Magazine and really, how many pages could a 19 month old possibly swallow before they just resigned themselves to enduring a mouthful of print ads for crap none of us need anyway.
3. Put ‘em in first class. Why? Cause screw those snobs, that’s why.
4. One word: Benadryl.
5. Every time the kid cries out beyond the first two minutes, the parent pays everyone within earshot 10 bucks. The kid might not shut up, but I’ll be a lot less likely to mind.

Come on, can’t someone invent an app for this?

My own feeling is that we are all much stronger than we suppose ourselves to be. And we’re also more fragile than any of us care to find out.

Figuring out a way to push the former without forgetting the latter can be a tough tightrope to walk.

In life, I feel, we want to “push it”. It feels good to push it. It’s personally rewarding. Human beings, it seems to me, were built for accomplishment. It’s when we are at our best. (And our worst as well, it could easily be argued.) But as I [unfortunately] know, sloth feels gross and though it can be an easy trap of dysfunction to fall into (rest and laziness are not the same thing… and laziness can be a spectacularly slippery slope) it is also something against which we need to all vigilantly guard.

Particularly when it comes to working with young people. In a way, one of our common core goals as teachers, no matter what we teach, is to set the table for kids in a way that allows them to bring out their best.

The poet Taylor Mali offers some great insight in his poem “What Teachers Make” that says,

You want to know what I make?

I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.

I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional medal of honor

I love that line… real teachers truly “get” it.

But the “when to push and when not to” dilemma eventually confronts us all when we work with kids. Whether they be our own children or other people’s kids, guiding youth, as the cliche goes, doesn’t come with a playbook.

The school year is over in just over a month for me. Did I push hard enough? Did I push too hard? Like I said above, my own feeling is that we are all much stronger than we suppose ourselves to be. And we’re also more fragile than any of us care to find out.

Are our best teachers not the ones who teach us about our edges, seeing more in us than we ever really saw in ourselves?