Before I left for the Anjs S. Greer Math Conference last week, I read an amazing blog entry at the Math Ed Matters website by Dana Ernst and Angie Hodge that was talking about Inquiry-Based Learning and the mantra “Try, Fail, Understand, Win.”  The idea came from one of Prof. Ernst’s student course evaluations this past spring as his student summed up his learning experience in such an IBL course.  This blog post was so meaningful to me because for each of these four words, the authors wrote how we as teachers (and teacher educators) can take this student’s perspective towards our own work.  I decided to attempt to take this attitude going off to my own conference with two courses to give and three smaller talks.  It was sure to be a busy week.

And in fact, it really was.  I had very little time to sit and listen to others’ work, which I really was quite sad about.  However, in my own classes I was so impressed with the amount of enthusiasm and excitement my participants had for PBL and their own learning.  As I sat in front of my computer this morning reading the course evaluations and their tremendously helpful input, it finally occurred to me how truly powerful the experience had been for my participants.  Many of them became independent thinkers and knowers about PBL and feel so much more knowledgeable and prepared for the fall.    Part of the class time is spent in “mock PBL class” where I am the teacher/facilitator and they are the students doing problem presentations.  We then sit and talk about specific pedagogical questions and distinctions in classroom practice.  Some of the class time is spent in challenging problem solving which is where I also learn so much from the participant’s different perspectives. “We win when we realize there’s always something we can do better in the classroom” – as Ernst and Hodge write.

I want to give a huge shout out to all of my participants from last week and encourage them to keep in touch with me.  Many of you wrote in your evaluations that you still have many questions about your practice and how to integrate your vision of PBL in your classroom.  I will always be only an email away and hope that you continue to question your practice throughout the year.

My plan is to try to write some blog posts at the end of the summer/beginning of the year in order to respond to some of the remaining questioning while you plan for the beginning of the school year such as:

1. How to plan for week one – writing up a syllabus, creating acceptable rules
2. Helping students who are new to PBL transition to it
3. Assessment options – when to do what?
4. Working hard to engage students who might not have the natural curiosity we assume

If you can think of anything else that you might find helpful, please post a comment or send me a message and I’d be happy to write about it too!  Thanks again for all of your feedback from the week and I look forward to further intellectual conversation about teaching and PBL.