One of the best things about the school where I work at is the lack of final exams. That’s in some sense a lie because we do sometimes use cumulative assessment tools at the end of each semester and that the end of each academic period brings lots of due dates. The important thing is that we don’t have a finals period and the curricula are planned so that nothing requiring a finals period is implemented. Instead of finals, we have a ten day period twice a year where students work on up to two mostly independent projects with the guidance of faculty members. Most of these projects are individual, student-created things while some of them are initiated by the faculty.

Now, we know that this is a great thing for the students. Pedagogically it exercises the students’ executive functions; in normal-speak it means that these projects teach kids how to get stuff done. In its bare essence it’s a time to go do something and have fun with it. It’s a great change of pace from the (arguably too) normal curriculum and the kids get to do whatever they want to, within reason. There are many people who can make eloquent and scientifically sound arguments for this project-based learning idea and explain to you why it’s a great thing for students, so I won’t do it here.

What I do want to do here is write about why it’s a great thing for faculty. This period of independent projects is a very large break from “normal” routines. This is a wonderful thing if you’re like me, who end up doing less work because less supervision is involved. (Some folks, like the drama teachers, spend ten hours a day in rehearsal.) It’s also a time for the faculty to learn; often the existing skill sets and experiences of the faculty isn’t enough to meet the students’ needs. I just had to relearn trigonometric substitutions because a student is doing a project on mathematical models and differential equations, something that I have not touched since the ages of yore. Last year, to help a couple kids out with their project I had to learn the basics of Labanotation and relearn all those wonderful modern dance steps that I’ve forgotten in the last decade.

More importantly, especially for me, it’s a time to experiment with strange, unorthodox, interdisciplinary, short courses that will never make it into a high school (or typical college) curriculum and have a whole bunch of fun; there is a fairly large number of faculty-initiated projects that serve as laboratories on material and teaching methods. We’ve done some pretty weird things; hell, I’ve done some pretty weird things. Sometimes they fall apart, but every time there’s something learned, a lot of fun had, and probably some chocolate eaten.

Really, what I’m getting at is that while it’s pretty awesome to hear “for tomorrow, go read the section in the Player’s Handbook on critical hits and make a spreadsheet that graphs the target armor class against the chance to hit given a fixed total attack bonus” when you’re about to get homework for the day, it’s more awesome so say it.

Wing :: Jan.10.2009 :: Posts :: 1 Comment »