Am I the Only One Sick of Projects?

Parents Forum
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<p>I confess to liking many of my Ss' projects to which we contributed little if anything. </p>

<p>One project was to build a Maya museum. All this was done entirely in school. Kids (and teachers) made papier mache models of some Mayan structures; kids wrote museum-style labels, wrote papers on different aspects of Mayan civilization. It was a capstone project to which parents were invited to attend. This was in 3rd grade, and I was awed by how much the kids had learned in order to construct that museum.</p>

<p>Another project was about the Middle East. It was a performance in a souk. The more artistic kids researched Islamic architecture and made backdrops. My S wrote several tales in the style of the 1001 Nights. Still another kid wrote poems. All the materials were provided by the teachers (we parents held fund-raising events every year to buy supplies for the classes, but the teachers did all the buying).</p>

<p>Yet another project was a pageant of Chinese history where kids impersonated different historical figures and made speeches (which they wrote) as they might have been given by their characters. Yet another was about immigrants after they'd gone through Ellis Island.</p>

<p>Kids also held a Renaissance Fair and "sold" goods they'd made; the more musically inclined sang some madrigals. I did have to ransack old clothes for that, as well as sew some "shoes." </p>

<p>The kids put on Shakespeare plays which, as friends of mine said, sounded quite unlike any Shakespeare play they'd ever seen (:() but the kids did know their lines. </p>

<p>On the whole, my kids were given plenty of time to do the projects and they did learn a lot from them. I actually feel quite nostalgic about many of them.
Another thing: the projects were not graded. In fact, by and large, the classes were not graded, though reports were quite substantive.</p>

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<p>As a college student I am delighted to say that I am past the years of ridiculous projects. In fact, I would go as far as to say that projects were one of the largest factors leading to my negative outlook on today's public middle and high schools. </p>

<p>To comfort the masses, projects are virtually non-existent on the collegiate level. Group discussions, research, and a presentation there may be from time to time- but none of the 'busy work' that consumes the entirety of high school and wastes time that should be targeted to more effective instructional methodologies. A typical college course includes: 1 paper, Class Participation, an Exam. Why are high school teachers so hesitant to lecture? They are doing the students a disservice by this hesistance.</p>

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<p>Marite -- I have no quarrel with the elaborate projects done in class. The hilarious impersonations of historical figures; the Renaissance Faires with music, food, and poetry recited in costumes made by somebody other than me; those wonderful bound books with the loopy plots and wild illustrations of a giant cowgirl eating San Franciso; I concede that these are all educational and fun. What I object to are the endless nights at home trying to make rice crispie clusters in the shapes of life-sized internal organs which purportedly provide hands-on learning but in our house seem only to waste a great deal of time and food products. I object to having children stuck elbow deep in crisco when they want to go pursue projects of their own devising. Although I think my kids have attended pretty good schools, I object to the trend I've observed in those schools and all around us of sucking children's time into mandatory school-related after-school homework activities that militate against children having substantial amounts of unstructured time when they can develop their own talents and interests. I wonder if children who barely have time for a leisurely family dinner during project season will grow into adults who think it is important to have dinner with their own kids, or have any idea what to do with free time for that matter. I think it is much more valuable for a nine year old to be able to see a friend or have dinner at his grandmother's house on a weeknight than to spend hours making paper dolls of Lewis and Clark. But around here, the schools that seem to provide the most stimulating in-class environments and turn out the best educated kids also seem to demand an enormous out of school time commitment the value of which I question, particularly for elementary and middle school aged kids. This is a rant that goes way beyond school projects, I realize. Sorry.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Not only does this story illustrate how stupid the rubrics were for this assignment (and how stupid the teacher was), I can't help but laugh a bit as I think.... was she also suggesting that your husband's family hadn't "done their part" by producing enuf descendants? I imagine that she was suggesting that your family hadn't helped enuf to identify everyone, but it also suggests that she was criticizing your h's family's fertility!

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Jlauer--Bing Bing Bing! You are correct.. the latter is exactly what the teacher was saying! :) (Unbelievable, huh?)</p>

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<p>Projects are WRETCHED.</p>

<p>GROUP projects are BEYOND WRETCHED.</p>

<p>One year, we spent an entire spring break trying to construct all sorts of things for a unit on the Wild West. When asked to evaluate the experience after, I simply wrote:</p>

<p>My child learned MUCH more about the properties of hot glue on styrofoam than she did about anything related to the American West.</p>

<p>'nuf said.</p>

<p>~berurah</p>

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<p>CCsurfer:</p>

<p>So the objections is not to projects as a means of learning but to projects, most of which need to be done at home, I take it? As opposed to teachers lecturing or perhaps showing and students taking notes? In this case, we are in agreement.</p>

<p>I was reflecting on my own education in which in high school chemistry, we were taken to the lab every once in a while to see the teacher perform and experiment while we were told not to touch anything. The rest of the time, the teacher lectured (including telling us the proper punctuation) and we had to take down everything verbatim (she checked our notebooks).
Homework for us consisted on memorizing (again verbatim). My Ss' hands-on project-based learning was, by contrast, a breath of fresh air.</p>

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<p>Marite:</p>

<p>There's a huge difference between a hands-on chemistry experiment versus the typical 'project' where generally all that's learned is, as berurah stated, how to better apply glue to styrofoam or how to better color, and how to otherwise waste huge amounts of time for little to nothing gained.</p>

<p>Besides chemistry experiments, there are other projects that can be beneficial and educational but the vast majority of them, as attested to on this thread, are not. It sounds as if your experience with your S's teachers in this regard was much better than most of us had.</p>

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<p>One of the biggest disappointments to me when touring the sparkling new science building at a exclusive, competitive private school was that the chem builiding had NO fume hoods except for the instructor. It appears that only the instructor would do experiments that involved anything that needed venting, or something. I had fond memories of chemistry experiments & thought it very odd not to install fume hoods for the students' lab tables. The private school my kids attend does have fume hoods for the students as well as the instructor.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, most of the "projects" my kids did (including group projects) were graded. :( It worked out OK, but took inordinate amounts of time for the minimal learning related to the subjects involved.</p>

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<p>ucsd-dad:</p>

<p>I've already said that I agree with CCsurfer. Quoting myself:</p>

<p>
[quote]
So the objections is not to projects as a means of learning but to projects, most of which need to be done at home, I take it? As opposed to teachers lecturing or perhaps showing and students taking notes? In this case, we are in agreement.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Please believe that I am entirely capable of understanding what other posters explain without someone else crossing ts and dotting is.</p>

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<p>To me its the big group projects that are most annoying- trying to coordinate 5 kids with sports, church, family stuff, etc</p>

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<p>marite:</p>

<p>I've seen enough of your posts to know that you're quite capable. I was just indicating that I don't put chemistry experiments in the same category as 'projects'.</p>

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<p>Did you read the list of projects my Ss did? </p>

<p>What I tried to convey is that project based learning has been far more preferable than the brand of learning I experienced which was so passive that even chemistry experiments had to be done by the teacher and we were expected to remember ever comma and period verbatim. </p>

<p>And my point, since it does not seem to have come across very well at least to some, was that there are projects and there are projects and not all projects are bad a priori. There has been such a chorus of naysayers that I wanted to provide a contrasting point of view, namely that some projects are extremely worthwhile. </p>

<p>I guess my kids were very lucky to have what I consider to have been very enriching learning experiences which did not involve our spending our own money (except insofar as we contributed to fundraising event) or staying up until the wee hours, or our kids learning more about the properties of glue than about the Pilgrims. </p>

<p>I won't repeat myself.</p>

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<p>My S also often benefits from projects - hands-on learning seems to be the key to sparking his interest. (He's also very social and loves group/partner projects.) Someone on this forum wrote something that struck me - that projects are sometimes used to 'dumb' down classes -- why read/struggle with Shakespeare when you can build a model of the Globe theater instead -- was they expamle listed. And for me, that is the biggest fear with many projects... all too often, it seems assigned to avoid fact-based, memory-based real learning</p>

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<p>Katliamom:</p>

<p>An example of a project my S did: a desalination plant for a Middle Eastern country. this was part of a unit on the Middle East, in which students learned about the whole region then focused on a single country of their choice. They had to research the history, society, politics, culture of the country and write essays on these. Then they proposed some structure, wrote a further essay to explain its purpose, why it was built the way it was, etc... For each of the essays, they had to write a draft then revise it in light of comments from the teacher (who also commented on the final draft). My S thought that writing on a desalination plant would enable him to do a bit of science research--and he did; but he also researched Islamic art in order to explain how he would build and decorate the plant. My S is not the most artistic kid, and his model was not terribly interesting, though I was impressed by the research he put into his essays. Another of his classmates made a wonderful model of a community center in Israel and wrote a truly excellent set of essays to go with it. For each project my Ss were involved in, I recall that they had to write essays, whether for social studies units or for science units. But once again, I guess my kids were lucky.</p>

<p>I recently showed some of the work my Ss did to someone who was educated in Asia. She was stunned that as far back as 3rd grade, my Ss wrote papers with proper bibilographic references. I know I got to college without having had to write papers that involved real research.</p>

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<p>Marite, I think we are all in agreement that those kinds of projects would be great learning experiences. we all just have never encountered any--definitely my kids' experiences would fall into the hot glue on styrofoam category.</p>

<p>I'd love it if real learning happened in a hands-on way. The danger of the vast majority of projects is that they represent, to teachers, the appearance of learning, and they can be spun that way in lesson plans, reports, etc. But in fact no learning occurs. They replace learning with a big, fancy, empty hole, down which the student's real thirst for knowledge disappears.</p>

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<p>Garland:</p>

<p>I agree. The devil is always in the implementation, no matter what pedagogical fad is adopted. What I liked about my kids' education as opposed to mine is that they learned to be independent learners. I floundered mightily during my first year in college and part of it was that despite having passed my bac with flying colors, I had not learned to do the kind of independent research my kids began to do as far back as third grade.
The more I hear about other people's experiences the more grateful I am that my kids attended their particular school.</p>

<p>And, about family trees, I think my kids' teachers knew better than to ask their students to do one. Some kids had same sex parents; some were adopted from foreign countries (one considered an unrelated girl adopted at the same time as he by another family his "sister" and got together once a year); one had half-siblings, full siblings and step siblings; some parents were not married; the kids were friendly with parents' ex-BFs or GFs; in other words, there were every possible kinds of real and fictive kinship.</p>

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<p>Marite. Here the chemistry teacher would have told you to make models of compounds using pasta. I'm not advocating lectures and don't touch, but I have never understood the mania for making pictures for science or social studies out of inappropriate materials.</p>

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<p>Marite--I in turn agree. BAck to genealogies; we have families like that here, too. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to deter the teacher. He would have considered it not his problem. Big sigh.</p>

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<p>I know more about my dogs ancestors than I do my own father's</p>

<p>When my Ds were in 5th grade, they did "teddy bear projects"- it was a 2 month project, in a big binder, with certain parts needed, and other parts the kids to add themselves</p>

<p>Some parents thought doing on teddy bears was stupid, but when I thought about it, it kind of made sense</p>

<p>They had to do research, they had to be organized, they had to create bibliographies, table on contents, references, foot notes, all kinds of things needed in "real research" papers, so this was a way of focusing on presentation, sourcing, layout, learning different computer programs, learning how to research, using art, while gaining skills in organization, planning, etc.</p>

<p>It allowed all kinds of skills to be gained without as much pressure on the content</p>

<p>And because of that, the projects were very imaginative, thought out, some kids who weren't great writers showcased their art</p>

<p>All in all, I think what was learned, even though it was "just teddy bears" was very valuable</p>

<p>Later in the year, when more serious research was done, the teacher knew the kids understood the way to do a project and could then focus on the content itself</p>

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<p>Garland:</p>

<p>It always seems to come back to the teachers, doesn't it? In our k-8 school, parents participated in the hiring process, so we were able to communicate to prospective teachers what we liked about the pedagogy and we, as a community, were invested in it as well. In fact, a group of parents participated in the overhauling of the social studies curriculum for a couple of grades.</p>

<p>I've just recalled another ""project." This was the class quilt, for which each kid had to do a square depicting a special thing or event in his or her life. The kids came up with the idea and drew a design. They then chose scraps of materials from a large stock that the teachers had collected and cut them and sewed them into the design of their choice. The teachers then sewed all the squares into a giant quilt that hung in each class. At the end of the year, they unstitched the squares and returned them to their owners.</p>

<p>Cut to last spring. S asked me for some thread and needle so he could mend a favorite pair of trousers. I offered to do it for him but he reminded me he'd learned to sew back in 3rd grade for the class quilt. :)</p>