By Carmela Jones, MNS
“The purpose of a school is to help a family educate a child.” – Dr. Don Edgar
Admittedly, I might have bit off more than I could chew that first semester attempting to implement MI in all my classes. I even had my health class creating new sports. It was around the time the ESPN Extreme Sports channel was beginning to gain traction. One student reconfigured a surf sail onto a skateboard and created surf sailing on land. Still, I went through my existing curriculum at a much slower pace because of the learning curve required to master Modeling Instruction (MI).
Around the middle of the first semester, I received some backlash from a parent; one concerned mother insisted on a meeting with the principal, her child, herself, and me. The meeting began with an emphatic statement from her: “My daughter says you’re not teaching anymore.” To which I replied matter-of-factly: “Isn’t it interesting how much more she’s learning when I’m not teaching?”
I proceeded to explain the pedagogy and the goals of student engagement, student ownership, and student learning. Underlying modeling is the philosophy that students must take responsibility for their own learning. The teacher became a guide or mentor to the class. Students were split into groups of three, where most of the learning took place. It was particularly rewarding to witness when that fire of enlightenment sparkled in students’ eyes as they discovered scientific principles and articulated them.
They shared what they learned on white boards and through oral presentations. During this presentation time, they modified their models based on comments made by their peers. The teacher typically asked questions through Socratic dialogue to bring misconceptions to students’ attention rather than directly correcting them. The teacher also helped students tie everything together after presentations by guiding them through a summary session.
The Modeling Method assumed that students were intelligent enough to be taught how to THINK like scientists by doing the things real scientists did. Most of the learning took place actively compared to the passive learning in traditional, lecture-type classrooms. Eventually, students learned to question themselves even before they got up to do their presentations. They actually taught themselves how to THINK for themselves. Was that not, in fact, what great scientists do? In the real world, scientists collaborated to discover principles that were not in textbooks eventually correcting misconceptions.
I asked the protesting mom to partner with me to educate her child and give it at least one more quarter. We revisited the progress her daughter had made and adjusted from there. I asked the student to give it a chance and do her best to participate. I would work with her and her classmates to continue creating a classroom atmosphere that she could navigate. The principal liked that and held a steadfast support for me. We began the meeting with a conflict and ended with a partnership. Time would tell how things would turn out, I thought.
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If you are a Modeling teacher, share your story by sending it to the email listed. If you know a great Modeling teacher, encourage them to send their story to the email listed. cjones.stemprofessionals@gmail.com.
If you are Modeling teacher and want to interact with other Modeling teachers with a question, an issue, a classroom experience, an announcement, or anything other MI teachers might be interested in, post it on the M2M (Modeler to Modeler) blog on the AMTA site. https://modelinginstruction.org/submit-a-blog-entry-to-m2m/
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