{"id":153,"date":"2006-04-14T20:22:19","date_gmt":"2006-04-15T04:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/2006\/04\/the-problem-of-the-long-term\/"},"modified":"2006-04-14T20:22:19","modified_gmt":"2006-04-15T04:22:19","slug":"the-problem-of-the-long-term","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/2006\/04\/the-problem-of-the-long-term\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem Of The Long-Term"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we move to the end of the year, I spring long-term projects on my classes. The 3-week A Yellow Raft In Blue Water<\/em> project for English 3 has groups reading only one section of the novel and preparing a presentation on that section according to specific guidelines. English 4’s Siddhartha<\/em> project found the seniors with 2 weeks of class time for planning, practicing, and preparing their final on the novel. In each class, for the duration of the project, class time is turned over to the students in order to develop their ideas for the presentation. No lectures; no class readings; no homework; no due dates except the final product.<\/p>\n

AP testing and all kinds of end-of-year nonsense make it reasonable to provide kids with a calendar and let them go at their own pace. I also enjoy ending the year in that way, suggesting to the students the control they have over their own education.<\/p>\n

The problem I have, year after year, is that despite the week(s) of uninterrupted class time I give to classes and no matter the fact that the final product has a work load that necessitates as much time as possible to complete, those solid days where I start with announcements and then provide the entire class session for work to be done, those weeks where there’s no other work on their plate but this one project, those times where homework is a foreign term to us still fill up with groups who are not ready when the presentation is due.<\/p>\n

And during those times that I leave the class open for students to work, I continually roam around and push groups back on task, only to find the other half of the room egregiously off task. The vicious cycle runs its course every day. And I run with it, moving from side to side and patiently urging students to work, work, work.<\/p>\n

This year has been a revealing year for me in a lot of ways. The number one thing I’ve happened upon, though, is students don’t understand that they are sending a message about themselves through their actions. They really don’t get that it says something about them that they wasted hours and hours of time, only to be unprepared when it’s time to pay the piper. They don’t see that they send a message of ignorance when they turn in a malformed essay. And they don’t see the message of unreliability their poor attendance sends. Nor do they hear the clear promulgation of poor intelligence that their shoddy final product shouts out.<\/p>\n

And I fear that they will send this message next year or the year after, to bosses, co-workers, friends, peers, and the like.<\/p>\n

I feel like I fit that definition of insanity because I keep doing roughly the same unit plans and expecting different results. But I feel like it’s fairly realistic to set project requirements, set a final deadline, and then provide time to work. That’s how most jobs play out.<\/p>\n

Am I wrong to provide long-term projects and expect a performance on the due date? Am I wrong to leave the agenda in the hands of students so they can set their own pace? Am I wrong to expect students to use the time I give them to get work done on what they know to be a big final performance? How do you approach long-term projects? Do you micromanage daily responsibilities? Is the idea of giving students enough rope to hang themselves irresponsible on my part? Are even juniors and seniors too young for that kind of responsibility? Should I not allow for groups to perform on days other than when they are scheduled, resulting in weeks of class time truly wasted if they miss the deadline since they can’t make up the task (or the points)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we move to the end of the year, I spring long-term projects on my classes. The 3-week A Yellow Raft In Blue Water project for English 3 has groups reading only one section of the novel and preparing a presentation on that section according to specific guidelines. English 4’s Siddhartha project found the seniors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}