If you think civics and history are boring, you’re doing it wrong.
STEM, STEAM, and the absurdity of teaching isolated subjects in a vacuum.
While not every student who enjoys a class will go on to pursue that field as an occupation, every student in a government class will grow up to a be a citizen somewhere. So the problems at the center of non-traditional assessments in a class on social science don’t have to be hypothetical, and can in fact develop a much-needed sense of civic duty in students exposed to their authenticity and successful impact on the community. Fostering curiosity, drive, and inquisition skills could be the key to building a better citizen.
In many institutions today, different content areas are relegated to different physical areas, which has the potential to impose an inherent value judgment on the relative importance of some material over other. One cannot help but notice that the lawmakers shining a massive spotlight on programs focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, (the Arts, sometimes) and Mathematics seem to be largely ignoring the very segment of their schooling which obviously made some lasting impact on them, as they have chosen a career in public service. But this brings us to the stunningly unique nature of project-based learning as a component of a civics or humanities curriculum — the problems to be solved don’t have to be imagined.
Project-based learning is among the latest buzzwords in educational jargon, but nothing new to teachers who have been trying for decades to secure student buy-in and make learning more than mere memorization of presidents’ names or state capitals. This can be the key to bridging the gap between familiar and validated classical instruction and a total free-for-all that many fear is the inevitable endpoint of any deviance from lecture.
When I needed to convey to my students the finer points of Linkage Institutions in American Government, I could have lectured, but wanted instead to see what they could do. It’s not unthinkable that some of these kids may some day intern in an office or work on a campaign, so I asked them to do just that — create the launch event, do some opposition research and debate prep, even tell me what your candidate would tweet in response to a global tragedy. And the outcomes were impressive, far exceeding any specific hoop I could have designed for them to jump through.
The most successful launching point for projects is often a deceptively-simple question. I recently came across an online post that is basically a response to the question, “How generous was Harry Potter?” Household budgeting is a snooze-fest; converting galleons to dollars and figuring out how many weekend shifts I would have to work to get my hands on a functioning wand? Yes, please!
While such cross-curricular projects may seem nebulous and difficult to quantify, we already have evidence that it is valued in American society:
Math + Sports = Moneyball
Math + Political Science = 538 & Nate Silver
Nature + Geometry = Art
(see left and below)
No Child Left Behind sparked the early 2000s’ push for standardization in education, seeking to bring American students back into competition on a global scale and unintentionally undermining federalism in the process. Thanks to Newton’s third law, the much-anticipated equal and opposite reactions have taken myriad forms: the proliferation of independent and charter schools, the bemoaning of incoming freshmen lacking empathy and grit by undergraduate institutions, and vocal concern among employers about the creative and problem-solving capabilities among the next crop of new hires. So in our enthusiasm to push our kids to lead the pack, how did we end up leaving them behind?
There has clearly been resistance to the unintended consequences of the far-reaching NCLB policies, eventually resulting in its replacement by the Every Student Succeeds Act in late 2015. Now left to their own devices, states retain much more freedom to tailor education policies, benchmarks, and interventions to suit their own schools’ specific needs. This new-found autonomy has the potential to usher in a new wave of innovative educational practices, if we can find a way to quantify the results.
Schools too often have insisted on teaching siloed subjects like a color-by-number masterpiece, when life usually ends up feeling much more like a Jackson Pollack rough draft. By continuing to insist on teaching subjects exclusively and actively resisting cross-over, we actively disadvantage our students in their ability to apply their knowledge in practical situations. From my own personal academic experience as a student, I can tell you that mathematics lost me around the time that they started including letters in the calculations, but if asked how to make sure that I get my equal portions of pie at Thanksgiving, I am suddenly a geometry whiz kid. Perhaps this is the most essential allure of project-based learning — it inconspicuously preempts that dreaded question: When am I ever going to use this?
We now live in a world where mere factual regurgitation is no longer sufficient to demonstrate mastery of content — most of our students have more calculating power in their pockets than America used to put a man on the moon. Many teachers live by the rule that ‘if someone can Google the answer, then it wasn’t an authentic assessment.’ That being said, the skills of critical analysis and the ability to apply accurate facts will serve the next generation of graduates well. Are you going to be a failure at life if you don’t memorize the essential elements of the Bill of Rights? No. Are you going to be taken less seriously if you cite the second amendment as the source of free speech? Most definitely.
We want well-rounded BRAAAAAIINSSS…
Kerri-Anne Alexanderson is a teacher of Film History, AP Psychology, and a Psychology Research & Seminar course at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale. She often integrates project-based assessment into her courses, even presenting an elaborate interdisciplinary project at the 2015 National Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference in Boston. While she understands that some students find the non-traditional formats frustrating, Kerri-Anne sees it as part of her job to push them out of their comfort zones a little bit, and these projects provide a fantastic opportunity to customize the learning to each student’s unique talents and needs.
“Testing doesn’t work for every kid, so some type of authentic assessment allows them to demonstrate their understanding through manipulation of the material. It is very evident if they have just copied words from a source or if they have found a way to make it their own.”
Ms. Alexanderson was inspired to formalize just such a cross-curricular exercise when she noticed unintentional overlap between her course and others that students mentioned. After hearing that the literature classes had encountered the work of Sigmund Freud, or that the anatomy classes were discussing the prevalence of various neurotransmitters, it seemed a natural next step to actively collaborate with other instructors and encourage students to start looking for the crossover between seemingly-disparate content areas.
“Teaching Psychology helps us to understand how other disciplines connect on several levels — Psych overlaps science, with history of medicine and the world, and many others. There is an obvious connection between biology classes in the science department and the unit on the biological bases of behavior in Psych. I was already friends with the Bio teacher, so we decided to make it a more purposeful connection.” The result was the legendary Zombie Project, asking students to develop marketing campaigns for supernatural beings, selling products based on accurate physiological functioning.
For students who tend to be wallflowers in class, this can be an opportunity to shine, some even going so far as to design mobile apps or social media branding. And she’s not the only one who sees the value in a crossover between science, history, and persuasive appeal — NASA is embracing a similar notion in its latest nostalgia-meets-innovation marketing campaign.
A Growth Mindset — for all parties involved
When Flagler Palm Coast High School in east-central Florida sought to address their changing cultural needs, they joined the growing New Tech Network of Schools and opened the Institute of Integrated Investigations (i3) Academy in August of 2013.
With facilities, staffing, course design, and technology integration that all spoke with a single voice, this new subset of the larger public high school was able to effectively offer “all core content courses and graduation requirements for students in a setting that is based on the following beliefs: ‘A Culture that Empowers, Teaching that Engages, and Technology that Enables.’” Empower, Engage, and Enable indeed.
Michael Rinyu is an educator with nearly a decade’s experience in the classroom. He recently joined the i3 Academy, and has been blown away by the shift in mindset and unique school culture. “The interdisciplinary aspect of teaching [at a] Newtech school has really changed everything about the way that I teach. We don’t even call ourselves teachers; we call ourselves facilitators.” While he admits that finding the role that English will play in a particular project can sometimes be challenging, he noted the crucial element of authenticity makes it all possible. “When we find real world problems and have kids finding actual solutions and bring in actual experts to evaluate different aspects of the project,” Rinyu explained, it clarifies the purpose explicitly to the students. “I never hear the question of ‘why are we doing this?’”
As an professional, Michael admits that it has challenged some of his own assumptions about education: “The biggest part about teaching an integrated class as a team is the ability to respect other people’s ideas and let go of some of your own. You need to have a growth mindset when it comes to your own learning and be willing to adapt constantly to new situations. One of the hard things for teachers in this regard is letting go of schedules [and structure] that we tend to cling to so tightly. You have to be okay with things shifting and changing all the time.”
Most recently, Mr. Rinyu’s team has been working on a bio-literature genetics project. Since the biology side dictates that the course cover genetics, the team of facilitators set about designing an authentic and creative way to approach that topic, and what they settled on might seem a little outside the comfort zone of most literature teachers: buying a small pack of leopard geckos. “The students have to study the leopard gecko genetics, create Punnett squares, and figure out what the offspring of different combinations of these guys would look like. After that they have to look at the value of these geckos and then create a web page where they try to sell them. The web page has to include a care sheet and genetic information for the geckos.” Students also supplemented their understanding of selective breeding by reading the novel Jurassic Park. Community connections with the Reptile Discovery Center allowed them to bring someone in to speak about possible careers using herpetology in addition to genetics. “Originally we were only going to tour his facility and have them discuss genetics but when the kids found out about… other careers they didn’t know existed in these fields, we planned a return visit to hear a speaker about possible related occupations. “That’s an example of how we modify our project to increase student buy in.”
Millennial Chickens Coming Home to Roost
So where do civics and STEM enter this rambling assemblage of fascinating cross-curricular creative manifestations? We are rapidly approaching a time when kids who have spent their entire academic careers under the reign of NCLB are reaching universities. These are the kids headed out to grueling unpaid internships, and before long they will be the ones offering those positions and even running for office. Amid the piles of analysis out there about the distinctive worldview of Millennials is an underlying assumption that we will want our world leaders to be able to think critically. To cross assumed barriers. To advance the objectives of their communities, not merely serve them as they have always been served. To create, not simply to consume. And the more practice they have in developing ideas that are original, novel, and useful, the better off we all are. Not only will they be equipped to take on the challenges they will face, but they will also have a sense of engagement in their world that will make their involvement much more meaningful.
