Final Presentations

The teachers spent a considerable amount of time over the last few days planning concrete ways in which they would use the material from this workshop in their classes next year. At the end of the workshop, they all gave presentations to the whole class about their plans. I was very curious to hear what they would say in these presentations, since I have seen them planning some questionable activities in their small groups. (This post gives a pretty typical example.)

In the end, the presentations were deeply unsatisfying. After watching them all, I really had no idea what any of them were really going to do in their classrooms. Most of the groups came up with lessons for different topics that were roughly modeled on what had happened in the workshop. They said things like: We're going do something like the Algebra Project, where we go on a field trip, and then talk about people talk and feature talk, and then we're going to do Energy Theater. But they didn't say what they meant by "something like the Algebra Project" or "do Energy Theater." What I had seen in their small groups was that when they talked about doing Energy Theater with their classes, they often thought that what we consider critical aspects, like letting students develop their own representations, were too hard for their students, and they were really dumbing it down to make it easier for their students. There were two groups whose presentations including actually acting out the "Energy Theater" that they would do with their students, and both groups had people representing both energy and objects. When Lane asked the director for one of them whether she was going to talk to her students about the distinction between energy and objects, she said, "Absolutely!" but didn't explain how.