I have returned from my trip to Indianapolis and I would like to thank everyone that I met there for turning out to both of the presentations that I gave. The talk I gave on Saturday, which was with my colleague was more about our Problem-Based Learning curriculum at our school. The turn-out there was amazing and we were so impressed with the questions and comments from the group. Some of the feedback was great food for thought, especially some specific questions about our definition of PBL. It was also extremely useful to hear what teachers would feel are the challenges of implementing PBL in the classroom. I would direct some teachers to the blog of a teacher in Massachusetts named Mark Vasicek who has attempted to you PBL pretty consistently for a number of years West Side Geometry. It’s good reading.

I think that one of the reasons that so many people might be interested in even thinking about changing the way that they teach right not is because of recent work through the CCSS. There were so many opportunities at this conference to read about, talk about and learn about the details of the Common Core State Standards that I think by Saturday many people were almost tired of hearing about them. However, PBL definitely directly relates to at least a few of the CCSS standards of Mathematical Practice:

Making sense of problems and persevering in solving them.
Reasoning abstractly and quantitatively.
Constructing arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others.
Looking for and expressing the patterns used in reasoning.

We tried to give examples of how we see these standards coming to life as outcomes in student work on a regular basis in the PBL classroom. Having so many people come up to us afterwards for more information, or with interest in getting in touch was really exciting. Sunshine and I truly hope that you do. I really look forward to it.