by Anne Jolly

I remember walking through the office area with a bounce in my step – the holiday spirit everywhere! Student-made seasonal cards glittered on bulletin boards, a lighted tree sparkled in the office, and smiles issued from office personnel, administrators, and teachers alike.

My eyes rested on a figure huddled in a corner chair, as far away from the festive atmosphere as he could get. Head down. Red-faced. Anger, frustration, and depression spilling out over the waiting area. I paused as I recognized William. I’d taught William the previous year, or at least, I had tried to teach William. He failed to pass his eighth grade work — primarily because he failed to do any work, and now he’d joined the list of repeaters.

As I considered his six-foot frame, hunched over the beat-up trombone case on which he rested his head, I was hit with a fresh sense of failure. William had an IQ of 140 plus. His major interest seemed to be in proving to everyone – parents, teachers, and administrators – that he didn’t have to do anything. He developed “passive resistance” into a finely tuned art. William’s interests also extended to creating frequent class disruptions and alienating everyone around him, including peers.

I had never tried to teach a student who was any more out of place than William. He didn’t fit any mold. With 160 other students a day in my teaching load, tailoring a program for a young person as atypical and as emotionally needy as William had proved to be a challenge that I failed to meet.

I walked over to William. He didn’t look up, even when I asked, “What’s going on, Will?” He just mumbled bitterly, “I’ve been suspended.”

Suspended. Again. A sense of heaviness settled over my lighthearted mood. William’s transfer to this school was already in jeopardy. I sat down and chatted informally with him. I learned that he liked to begin novels, but did not finish them. He hated school because he felt bored and out of place. He was continually at odds with his family.

William finally glanced up when I told him that I shared his sense of failure. I failed to find the “engage” button for him last year. Failed to help him through the stuff churning around inside him. I acknowledged my sadness that he was struggling in a system that demands too much conformity from students.

His head dropped again, but his body language said: “Go on. I’m listening.”

“Work with us, Will,” I appealed, “For yourself and for the sake of other kids like you. Help us find some ON buttons. Help us figure out what the ideal school for kids like you would look like.”

He never answered. When William came back after his suspension, he behaved in the same manner – the same way he’s behaved since kindergarten. And his teachers probably offered the same responses. No shift in anyone’s modus operandi. And none of us had heard of STEM.

Why STEM might have made a difference

Sometimes, considering kids like William, the reality of what teachers face in helping students learn every day seems overwhelming  Looking back on that day 10 years ago, I wish I had known about the STEM approach to teaching and learning. We have real evidence that this approach can work – and really work well.

In my STEM consulting, I work with teachers and students who are talking together and working together to develop strategies for changing the way we teach students. I’ve seen students come to life in the classroom when given opportunities to make choices and experiment with solving real-life problems. Outside evaluations show marked increases in student learning (and excitement about learning) in schools that are implementing STEM.

And no wonder. STEM lessons employ a wide array of strategies that have previously been used to meet the needs of academically talented students in schools. With STEM, all students can apply math, science, and technology in real-case scenarios. They all act as engineers and designers and create solutions. They practice working in teams to communicate ideas, respect one another and share success.

3 things I wonder about

Change is hard. “Going it alone” doesn’t work anymore. (As if it ever did.) That’s why teacher teaming to implement STEM lessons is critical piece of the picture. It will take all teachers working together to learn how to engage all students in STEM/problem-based learning.

I wonder . . .

• What would effective education and schooling look like if all schools did this?
• What would school systems, administrators, and teachers need to do differently?
• How can we build full, enthusiastic teacher participation in the STEM process?

My New Year’s Resolution

My personal resolution for the year 2013 remains the same as it has since the day I walked into my first science classroom to find that I had no science equipment, no laboratory, and 181 amazing 8^th graders each and every school day.

I resolve to continue trying to establish a sustained, engaging process that leads to high quality student learning and provides ongoing support for teachers to share, grow, and learn.

That’s educationese for: “Heck! I care so much about this remarkable teaching vocation, with its amazing moments and its mind-bending challenges. I care so much about teachers, who are literally shaping and saving lives. I am captivated by the magic that occurs when the light comes on for students and they really begin to learn and grow. And I grieve when I look at situations that keep teachers from doing what they have given their lives to do — and that prevent students like William from learning as they should. I’ll probably spend every day the rest of my life trying to make education better.

I think STEM is a big part of the solution for students and teachers today. Authentic teacher collaboration is another important piece. So those two things will continue to be my personal focus.

If my resolution seems idealistic, I make no apologies for that. But at least it’s less idealistic than my usual resolution to exercise and lose weight. Happy New Year!

by Anne Jolly

I blinked in surprise. My oldest son sat across the table from me. He was finishing up his first year of college. In high school he’d made a 35 on the ACT (having missed a math problem because – according to him – he made a silly mistake.) He was acing his coursework in calculus, physics, as he always had in mathematics and sciences. And now at dinner,  he had just announced that he’d decided on his major. He was going to major in English – specifically, creative writing.

His explanation was simple. He was tired of subjects with “right and wrong” answers. He wanted classes that allowed him to think. He wanted to wrestle with responses and ideas. After a physics test on which he made the highest grade in the large freshman class, he wrote beside his posted grade: “Anything a Physics major can do an English major can do better.”

This happened in the 1980s. I know that the maths and sciences require students to think, but at what level was inquiry-based teaching and critical thinking emphasized in ‘80s STEM-related classes? I don’t have a hard number, but in those days it didn’t seem to happen in most high school classes and certainly not in those supersized freshman level college classes.

Fast forward to today’s K-12 math and science classes. I wonder how many math and science teachers still expect students to follow a specific predetermined procedure that gets them to the predetermined “right” answer. And how well do these canned lessons prepare them for today’s world?

Some sunshine

Before heaving a sigh of despondency, let me tell you another story. I recently watched a video of a teacher in Mobile, Alabama working with her 2^nd graders. They were sitting on a rug in front of the board with nothing but their brains – no paper, pencil, or other tools. The teacher wrote the number 53 on the board. Then she told her students, “Think about this number. 53 is the answer. How did we get this answer?”

You could tell the kids had done this before. They studiously regarded the two-digit number, and when they had a response they put their “quiet thumb” up under their chins. One by one, the teacher asked them to share how they arrived at the answer, until all the students’ solutions were on the table. Then they talked about all the answers. The roads to 53 are amazing and creative.

STEM can grow better thinking

The point of my story, of course, is that these second graders weren’t being asked to recite the “right” answer — they were being encouraged and allowed to come up with multiple pathways to get to a satisfying solution.

That’s the part of the STEM process that can revolutionize our subject areas. In our middle grades curriculum designs, we want students recognizing that there are multiple ways to solve a problem, and then coming up with as many as they can. And we don’t have the corner on the market. Today this process is beginning in elementary schools! (I visited a kindergarten team meeting in Birmingham, AL where the teachers decided to pose this problem to their students: “The answer is 20 cookies. What is the story?” Delicious.)

I wonder what my son would have thought about math and science if he had been taught to tangle with a variety of approaches to solving problems and conducting investigations — to look at a possible math and science career as an a adventure and not a life filled with routine and predictability.

I expect he would have still majored in English. He’s a really good writer. But maybe his reason for majoring in English would have been different, and not reflected his discouragement with math and science – subjects that should engender wonder and excitement in young minds.

STEM needs to be about wonder

In my past blog posts I’ve attempted to describe various parts of the engineering design process, but I feel especially passionate about this one. This element of excited curiosity is critical to developing tomorrow’s workforce, but it’s also critical to developing students who enjoy learning, who can see possibilities, and who arrive at potential solutions. It’s critical to tomorrow’s society, when you get right down to it.

Today’s teachers do have to teach in a way that allows students to explore, create, and develop multiple solutions for problems before reaching consensus on the best one to try. That’s the only way we’ll ever put the “E” in STEM. And that’s the only way we’ll ever turn out students who can solve the problems our world faces.

Problem-solving, problem-solving, problem-solving. How do you help your students do that? How would you like to help your students do that? Regardless of your subject area, have you ever had really good professional learning opportunities — the kind that helped you learn how to support your students as they devise multiple pathways to problems? Just wondering . . .