How to Achieve Excellence during Distance Learning

As a teacher, trying to provide meaningful lessons to my students over the past couple months of distance learning has been challenging. Since our last day of regular school on March 13th, our district has implemented a distance learning plan where students and teachers interact through Google Classroom, and lessons are generally done on a flexible schedule of the student’s choosing, not live. The challenge is to provide lessons that are rigorous, but also understandable without my immediate assistance. While students can contact me for help, the reality is that few do so, so I try to make the lessons as clear and focused as possible. See my previous post about how I have changed my lesson planning.

So should we expect students to do excellent work in these circumstances? Absolutely! It is true that some students will try to do the least amount of work possible, whatever the lesson or the subject is. Nevertheless, many students have excelled in daily lessons, and especially in long term projects. The most notable work I have seen has been in a special science research program that I started in our school this school year. The students in this program commit to doing a three-year science research project. They begin in their sophomore year learning the science research process, choosing a research topic of interest, and finding a mentor. During their junior year, they conduct their research project under their mentor’s oversight. During senior year, they write a college-level research paper documenting their work. They may also work during summer sessions. The program is under the University at Albany’s University in the High School program, so students can earn college credits for the last two years of this program. My students are near the end of their first year in the program, and they just completed a virtual Science Research Symposium, a video where each student presented his or her research project and a brief testimony about their experiences so far in the program. The students put together and edited this video all on their own with each one working from home. Despite the challenges involved, the students produced an excellent product of which our school is very proud.

So what made these science research students produce such excellent work, while the average student working on a much simpler lesson may do only mediocre work? I believe the fundamental reason is one of choice. The students in the research program were guided on how to choose an advanced topic for research and given the tools to conduct that research. This task challenged them, but they had chosen to do it. In contrast, the typical student’s experience is to be given a series of tasks in each class, none of which he or she has chosen or would choose, given the chance. Dr. Maria Montessori created an educational system, the Montessori Method, over 100 years ago that is based on liberty of the child to choose what he or she wants to learn at any given moment, within appropriate boundaries. At first this approach may sound impractical in a modern, American high school – but we can provide quite a bit of choice to students. See my last post on how we can set up a classroom where students can work at their own pace using some of the tools we use now during distance learning. Giving students choice of topics, formats, timing, collaboration and other factors leading to their final product can help them become more motivated to achieve excellence. Quoting Montessori:

“I believe that the work of the educator consists primarily in protecting the powers and directing them without disturbing them in their expansion and in the bringing of man into contact with the spirit which is within him and which should operate through him.”

Dr. Maria Montessori, “The Advanced Montessori Method – Spontaneous Activity in Education,” 1917.

Thomaston High School Starts the Science and Engineering Cohort Program

Thomaston High School has started a new Science and Engineering Cohort program where students apply in 9th grade to take a three-year course in 10th, 11th, and 12th grades in which they do increasingly independent science research and engineering design projects. The program is open to all 9th grade students at Thomaston, and the first group of students applied in February after hearing about it in a class assembly. A selection board met in early March, and ten students were chosen from among the applicants. The selection criteria were based on academic performance, behavior and leadership in the school and community, and motivation to be in the program. The selected students were: Kristen Foell, Olivia Grenier, Emilee Guillet, Hannah Lawlor, Sandra McDonald, Julia Puprriqi, Connor Riley, Zachary Stevenson, Riley Villone, and Dylan Walmsley. Bryan Holmes, a new science and math teacher at Thomaston and the author of this blog, is the leader and teacher/mentor for the Cohort.

To help these newly selected students understand the type of work that I expect of them within the next three years, I took them on two field trips recently. On March 9th, we went to the Connecticut Junior Science and Humanities Symposium at the UCONN Medical Center in Farmington. This annual competition features students who have done independent science research projects, produced a detailed poster on their projects, and in some cases presented their projects to a board of judges. We went as observers, not competitors, but the experience was invaluable. The Cohort students got to ask the competitors about their research projects, and we got to participate in several different events, such as a hands-on forensics exercise, a talk on the ethics of genomics, and a panel discussion by students in undergraduate and graduate science programs. All in all, this trip helped our students understand what it means to do science research and engineering design at a high level in high school. Here are photos from this field trip:

The second field trip we took was on March 13th to the Connecticut Science and Engineering Fair at Quinnipiac University. This was a more traditional event featuring projects done by students in grades 7 through 12. We went during a public viewing time when all of the projects were on display without the competitors present–in fact we had the entire Quinnipiac gymnasium where the projects were displayed all to ourselves. I advised the Cohort students to focus on the high school projects that involved areas of science or engineering in which they were interested. There were about 500 projects to see, so we took about an hour to review them. Once again, the students got a clear picture of the high level of science and engineering that is possible, even at the high school level. We also visited the Quinnipiac admissions office, got a short briefing, and then did a self guided tour, primarily of the new engineering department. Here are photos from this trip, plus a photo from the fair a couple years ago to give an overview of what it’s like:

Since the first Cohort class does not start until next fall, I will not see these students regularly, but we have already planned a spring luncheon, a June orientation session, and possibly a painting party to decorate our classroom. We are off to a great start!

When to Get Science Students Started Writing a Book

In this blog I am sharing how I am guiding six high school science students who agreed to try to write and publish a book about their science research experiences by April 2015. My purpose is to share this book writing experience with other educators so you can do a similar project in your school. Because this was the first time I have tried, or even heard of this type of project, I first talked to a few students who I knew would be up to the challenge. They recruited more students, and I ended up with six who were volunteering to try this idea. The goal was for each student to publish a book by April 2015, and sell at least 500 copies by the end of the school year, achieving about five to ten times the sales of a typical first-time self-published book. I gave the students this goal to make them understand from the start that this was not a vanity publishing effort, just writing a book for their own pleasure, but a true publishing endeavor to reach a large audience.

TIP #1: When is a good time to start this kind of project? Start late in the school year so that the students are ready to begin writing during the summer break. Students (and teachers) are too busy during the school year to do a project like this on top of all their other activities. Before the school year ended, we met a couple times, first to ensure the students understood the project, and then to give them a clear plan on how to proceed. See the Project Schedule for an overview of our plan. This timing gave me and the students the whole summer to write a first draft of our books and to plan our marketing. This approach gave the students what they need to concentrate on the creative part of writing, while I showed them the technical details on how to publish and market their work. Once the school year starts this fall, we will only need to work in short bursts, either to edit and revise our drafts between reviews, or to send out biweekly blog posts. One thing I did not do, but would recommend, is to partner with other departments in your school, such as the English teachers, to get them on board with the project – they could be a big help with reviews. I will start doing this after the summer break, but would have liked to have started with them earlier. Next week, you will get a tip on drafting a book proposal, the first step in writing a book.

Subscribe to this blog at https://bryanholmesstem.wordpress.com to get email updates of my posts with weekly tips you can use in your classroom as I describe how I am mentoring six high school science students to become published authors by April 2015. Also, please give me your feedback, and please share blog posts with other teachers or anyone who may benefit.