“Kids will never understand fully if you just tell them the answer.  They have to break it down and understand it, take it piece by piece ‘cause if you get it straight on you’ll never know what happened. Like if you’re building something you’ll never understand how it’s built, you can never build it again because you don’t know what to do.”

You might think this quote comes from an experienced teacher who has worked with many students over years of seeing how they learn best.  Someone who has found that over time best practices have shown that individuals must spend time with material and grapple with their own understanding in order to learn for understanding.  However, this weekend I heard a fifth grade student named Jessica say this very quote in a video.  Words of wisdom from this young student who has experienced learning in a way that has been very meaningful to her.  Another teacher puts it this way:

“We’re asking students to do things that, at first, may be a little beyond them. But because of the way we present it, they find that they can do it. They’re not finding out how to do it by listening to the teacher explain.  They’re experiencing themselves as people who are capable of learning increasingly difficult skills. Confidence comes from knowing that “I can do it!” – Ted Swartz, Ph.D.

This may be the most controversial part of my definition of PBL.  The concept that not only the students are learning through their own inquiry and curiosity, but that they are asked to apply their own prior knowledge and to do so at an increasingly difficult rate of skills.  That they are asked to challenge themselves again and again.  Another big difference is the way that students experience themselves.  Swartz states that students experience themselves as learners who are capable of so much more than just listening to a teacher and doing what someone external to themselves tells them to do.  They are capable of their own direction in learning and of learning increasingly difficult tasks and managing those.

Also, students in these types of classrooms are concurrently practicing and learning new skills.  This is very different from the way we all learned as children and adolescents and it also goes against the culture of the math classroom in most of the U.S. today so we must set new norms and explain this to parents.  But it is something that is very rewarding.

We just had our Parents’ Weekend at my school and the two new teachers who were working on our pilot PBL shared with me stories of parents who had had negative feelings towards the curriculum at the beginning of the year.  I was nervous about how they were responding now, at the end of the school year.  However, to my surprise, my colleagues shared with me stories of how proud of these parents were of their students presenting in front of the class and articulating mathematical concepts to their classmates very well.  Are these straight A students now?  Not at all, but they are proud of their work, engaged in the discussion and enjoying math class.  These are great strides for these students.  And at the end of year where we worked very hard, this was truly inspirational.