Unit #3
I wrote last time of how one of the administrators I interviewed was not as optimistic as I was about PBL, Problem Based Learning, my topic of research.  The second administrator I interviewed this last week had a much more positive reaction to PBL.  I think mainly for this was his past experience in a charter school specifically designed around PBL.  He talked of a few reasons as to the success and failure of PBL.  One thing he said was that he felt that PBL needed to be a combination of the traditional teaching of content and the student driven learning of PBL.  I think even with my lack of experience and training, which is a reason for failure, it is a difficult balance.  How much do you teach versus the student's discovery.  Another thing that he talked about was that PBL is a means to learn content but in reverse, backwards.  I guess I knew it but I think giving this more consideration will help me with implementation of PBL in the math classroom.  Both administrators touched on lack of training as a reason for failure.  This I agree with.  It is very difficult to implement a new teaching method without having sufficient experience and training.  Reading about it just isn't enough and hands on is essential.  I do have at least one teacher so far from my surveys that will let me come into the classroom and observe.  She is not in my content area, math, but like I said before experience is essential in any environment. There are a couple other teachers that I'm hoping to hear from because their classes would be awesome to observe.