Personalization, is the pivotal progressive idea that needs to be in place to assure all student’s are successful. Personalization is also the idea that stops gatekeeping students around ability grouping and prevents student apathy. Personalization is what helps administrators focus on their real jobs of supporting teachers and focus school legal teams to find a way for progressive practices.


Students: need to work and think about what is their motivation and what their educational passion.


Teachers: need to be able to personalize their classroom. They need to dig deep to inspire every student. They need to sit down with every student to find out if the student is engaged and what they could develop special for each of them.
Personalization Assessment:
Teachers must evaluate students by personal growth not an arbitrary standard.


Administration: must help every teacher to achieve the progressive classroom that they dream of. Administration must treat every teacher differently, in that they will give them the support they need not all the same thing.


School District Lawyers need to find a way to help teachers not tell them no because of of liability issues. Lawyers jobs are easier if they say no, however their job is to find a way to say yes!

Relationship Management at Home, Classroom, and District
When you are in charge, what are your Responsibilities?

Whether it's your children, your students in the classroom, the teachers that you manage or the administrators that you oversee as superintendant, you need to think about what and who you're supporting. 

At home, if you let one child bully or tease the other, there will be long-term trust issues with you and that child. You also run the risk that your children will not be as close as adults because of the tension you seeded or let happened from a difficult childhood.

In the classroom, if you don't stop students from bullying, teasing or intellectually intimidating others, school will seem unfair. As the teacher, you need to defend the other students. Like at home the adults are in charge. The young person is not in the position to raise themselves. We have all been in that class where one student monopolies the time by talking or disrupting and the teacher does nothing to curtail this disruption.

Parenting and Teaching are two areas I know and have been on both sides as brother/student and parent/teacher.

I think Principles need to protect the teachers and tell them to “take a step back” or  “look at the bigger picture” parents and teacher do this all the time. It's harder for principals they have anywhere from 20 to 200 teachers. I worked 17 years in a teacher-run school, I have been the innocent victim and the provocateur many times, and the principals that got to know me were the ones that used my skills the best. 

Institutional oversight of managers and administrators is a hard one too. No one is born to lead; you have to learn on the job. (PBL) Superintendents that say; "if we could just treat everyone the same” or "my job would be easier if we had one rule for everyone "  you are not “Super.”  Just as the parents, teachers, and principals go in and talk to their kids, students and teachers you need to do the same. I know that it is time-consuming and challenging, but that's why your job starts with Super. 

The connection here is: if you are responsible for people, you need to get to know them, see what they need to thrive and protect them. I do that with my two sons, and they are fantastic, and with my students who did excellent work. Never cut corners when charged with managing people. 

Planning and Letting Go
How I changed education in my classroom

I did not change education on my own, however it took a mind that was not worried that “this isn’t what school is supposed to look like”. I was an unusual school teacher, I would be an unusual corporate employee too. I am a normal if not a little uptight artist. A real artist that makes and sells art. An Artist that sees what is new and novel in the world and riffs on it. I look at what is out there and I had my students make and do this kind of thing too. That doesn't seem so innovative. In the educational world that is earth shattering. Even in a progressive PBL school it was on the edge.

Most teachers teach what they think they have to. Most teachers now days do not really know their subject area, they are not Masters and how their subjects relates to the real world. Some teach from the book, others come up with projects that the students never complete. These teachers, do not plan, they do not do the project themselves first. I know there are a million rationalizations why the teacher shouldn’t have to do the assignments that they ask their students to do but that is bull shit. If you are offended by this, stop reading, go back to your classroom and continue to do half ass work with your students. If your admin you do not want to hear your teachers are not doing what they are supposed to do, stop reading.  The worse part of this is that you did not pick up on the fact that there is no real learning going on, just talking. I have seen the classroom “Chat” happen all over the world. To learn you must do and use the skills, medium or techniques. Just talking is not learning, talk is cheap.   

The thing is if you are going to teach out of the book, do it. If you are going to teach PBL, you need to plan, that is doing something you know, love, were trained to do and are charged to teach your students. Then have your students do, and show their work.

Everyone has to learn on their own path, I am not suggesting that everyone learns the same way. I am say DO WHAT YOU LOVE! Show the students what you did, have them do it, and they will do or make something cool. In doing they will: think, plan, research, make, critique, revise, improve and show other people what they have learned by transforming their knowledge into action.

You can buy a binder and fill out worksheets. Or you can use what you know to teach your students, like Socrates, Aristotle, Michelangelo, Newton, Rembrandt, Edison and every other master has done. Yeah those guys are all dead white men, but it doesn't have to be. Just all that beautiful honest educational relationships that they had with their proteges died when the factory model of education came to the world. We all know this about the factory school model but too many of us can’t walk away from it. Why? Scared, cautious, worried, uncreative, lazy, teachers and administrators that don’t spend real time in classrooms or that don’t want to deal with teachers all being different. If you think that every teacher needs to be the same and all the students learn differently, you have a problem. If admin doesn’t understand this they should go back to traditional schools or corporate world or maybe quit.  Everyone needs to follow their passions and take a chance. It will not look the same, everyone will be different and that is what we want. Americans in the twenty first century are the content creators not the factory worker.  This book will show you how I got there, with my students, for 17 years.

Getting started

What are you an expert in? Do that with your students. Oh, you are not an expert, become one. You are basically asking your students to become an expert, you need to as well. You don’t need to be perfect. Just try, get some critique and show your exemplare to your students. It is was more powerful to them than a rubric. Rubrics set the ceiling, exemplars set the floor. I said that.  

If you are not willing to show you are not perfect how can the students feel comfortable taking chances. I can’t spell, my grammar is shit but I am writing a book, sticking my neck out, trying to help you and your students. Not fluffing my ego, to look “Perfect”. This is a sticking point with a lot of teachers and admin. Students, Parents and the community want perfect teachers that do not make mistakes, and that is impossible. Own your mistakes and learn from them. Richard Farson Phd, psychologist and meta designer always encouraged people to look at their failures not their accomplishments. He said you will learn more from you mistakes than what you got right.  Embrace the same habits of mind that you want your students to have in your own work.

Here are my Habits of mind in the classroom, these are what worked for my, find your own!

1. Look for cool ideas.    
   
2. Make something.    
   
3. Show someone, have them critique your work.
   
4. Follow their advice. If it’s better, great. If not command Z.
   
5. Define the steps.
   
6. Show all of this work to the students. (They will see how much time, effort and love I put into their assignment and they will make it their project)
   
7. Exhibit their work.    
   

This seems simple and it is and it isn’t. You do and show, then the students do and show, there you have it. There is a lot that comes up everyday. That’s fine as long as you work with the students, be present, talk to them, find out what they need to be successful and they will be. When a teacher starts to disengage, leaves the classroom, gives pollyanna side assignments like daily journals, vocab words, quick writes this tells the students that the project is not important. It also shows that the teacher doesn’t believe in the project. I think it could also mean that the teacher misses that attention from the class. My suggestion is skip the low hanging fruit, focus on their students and their work, help them make and exhibit a great, complete project, not a polished turd. (John Santos)

​

Do Something is the psychomotor path. This animation encourages all of us to “Do Something” and then have the students “Do Something”, which they then exhibit for a public audience. It sounds simple, and it is. When we simply create situations in which student activity integrates the hands with the head and heart, the outcomes for student learning become amazingly complex in ways that are beyond what a teacher could possibly plan for. 

Andrew Gloag and I realized this simple path of “Do Something” when we started to prepare for the Get Bent project. We wanted the students to make a bentwood chair. We watched people online steaming and bending wood and tried it ourselves. After spending two weekends and $1000 we realized that steaming was not the way, we moved to laminating thin sheets of plywood. We made a proof model, promotional poster, physics concept diagram, the chair, a lamp to go with the chair and a book about the process. Then the students made our deliverables, some used bent metal chairs some chairs that bent instead of bent wood and that was ok. Everyone made something and showed their work proudly to the community on exhibition night. If we did not try it ourselves we would have not had the time for the project and exhibition. We did something and had the students do something too. The affective component, the heart part was believing that it was ok for every student to design, create, revise and control their own project. In our hearts we believed that they would and could learn everything they need by completing this project.


So, pick a path and try it. Plan for the cognitive path, or the psychomotor path. Then try using the other path to support your classroom. There are no silver bullets in education. The work we do in planning must reflect the kinds of work we want our students to engage in. Do you want them to passively listen and regurgitate what you say? Then plan a lecture. If you want them to bring their head, heart and hands to their learning, then you have to too. 

Ken Rignall was my graduate school advisor, my friend and my mentor in art and education. I was his mentor sometimes too. Ken taught printmaking and painting for 30 years at California College of Arts and Crafts. He also taught me how to make deep fried calamari. He was a little salty, having been brought up on the Monterey docks in the 1940s. He could have been a character from a Steinbeck novel; he was great and flawed, but always himself.

Ken would prepare for his class weeks ahead of time, carefully experimenting and planning. He would know every demonstration he was going to do each week because he did the projects ahead of time. He used his examples and other examples from past classes to show the students what he expected.

When I met Ken I had been teaching middle school and high school art for about four years. I would come to the print shop early and start my work and he would be there, nervously planning and setting up his presentation. I looked at him with amazement, and I said, “Hey Ken what are you doing? What’s up with the 3x5 cards and all the preparation? You could do this in your sleep. Thirty years and you still have to plan like this?” He never gave me a hard time. He just said, “I need to be able to show and tell the students what I am expecting. I need to know my directions will point them to success. I need to prepare because I am not perfect and I know it.” That shut me up.

Later, I was teaching freshman Lithography. Ken inspired me to write up the process with pictures and have examples ready to show so that the students could see the amazing things that were possible. I worked really hard, way harder than the art school kids that were paying $4000 to take my class. Now I realize that I should have worked harder than the students. It was my job to reach my students, not just show them art, but to reach inside their heads and get them to do some cool work.

Ken was a humble guy. He was insecure that he wasn’t good enough, and that served him well. He was a great artist, but just because he knew the subject matter did not mean he stopped coming up with new ways to teach students to learn how to make art. Content knowledge is important, but on the same level is the teacher’s desire to reach and connect with the student. “Our job,” Ken said, “is to get the kids to love to learn, and to keep experimenting.”

Ken was so supportive of me in my art and in my teaching. He died in 2003 but I feel like I am teaching his way. I always do the project first, so I can see the pitfalls and variables and know when students will need help. And I never think, “I don’t need to plan because I know more than my students.”

If you’re reading this and you are a humanities teacher, math teacher or a science teacher, I hope that you see the relevance of this story. Write that ten-page paper on your personal identity. Was it fun? When you finished it, was it interesting to read? If yes, that is great. Do the project or paper you want students to do, and then share what you created with them. If it was a drag, don’t submit your students to it.

I don’t have the students make color wheels anymore. First, no matter how cool it looks they don’t want to keep it. I have stacks of old color wheels. It was my assignment, not their project. Next, it is a flat concept. It is hard to understand why it is a good exercise to the novice; it is more just a vehicle of frustration. Finally, on-the-job training, or applying something in context, is much more effective than an exercise in a vacuum.

Instead I have the students use Photoshop to re-specify an image using the color picker and the paint dump tools.




This assignment gets the students to use Photoshop, teaches them values and hues, and gives them a great image to print and take home or to make into their first painting. They are proud of their work and they have fun doing it.

When I hear people say, “Why reinvent the wheel?” I think, “Because the wheel is plain and boring.” As teachers we need to remember the bad old days of our education and endeavor not to put our students through it too.

Ken would say if your students did “shitty work” it was the teacher’s fault. I agree, mostly. Every subject area needs to be sticky, engaging and exciting. We are lucky at High Tech High that we can customize our classes for the round peg in the square classroom. That is our job, and our burden sometimes.

One of my favorite things Ken ever taught me was the value of stupidity. He would say, “That painting is stupid, I love it! I want to try that too.” I think what he meant was that some things so obviously work. You did not think. You just did it and it looks really cool. At critiques students would say, “I love your work. It is so stupid.” It was like he reclaimed a putdown into a positive. 

We had this critique with some students from UC Davis and one of the graduate students from our class commented how stupid all of their art was. The UC Davis students were very offended, and then tickled about the misunderstanding. I like to tell this story just for the hell of it, but I think it is a window into Ken’s genius. Never believe you are the best and that you are the sole oracle of information in your classroom. Always try to improve and don’t sit on your butt. Do the assignment with the students. It all seems obvious, almost stupid, to me now.

A founding faculty member of High Tech High, Jeff Robin has influenced the processes of project design and presentation across all HTH schools. Here, with characteristic candor, he shares his thoughts about the planning, management and exhibition of student projects.

Project-based learning is difficult to do well, but it is worth it! (Keep repeating this even when you’re covered in sawdust in the middle of the night on the weekend at school.)

When Ron Berger, the noted evangelist for project-based learning, came to High Tech High for the first time and saw my digital portfolio, he told me how great he thought it was. I was flattered and proud of myself. Then he said, “You should put all your projects online, and all your students’ work too.” Now I work harder showing the work than I do helping my students make it. I refer to Ron as my nemesis, half joking and half serious. But I know that having exhibition as an end goal, and knowing from the outset how the work will be displayed, helps me teach.

Planning, management and exhibition are equally important components of project-based learning. Without planning, the teacher is frantic, the students are bored, and the results are sloppy or non-existent. Without management, the students procrastinate, fall between the cracks, make work that they don’t like, and think the class is a joke. Without exhibition, the adult world connection is gone, the reflective moment is lost, and the money, time and effort of the project are wasted. 

We have all offered excuses as to why we did not have planning, management and exhibition (PME) in place, insisting that the project was successful anyway. But when doing a project it makes a huge difference, for example, if you take the time to do the project yourself ahead of time, set every Wednesday as a check-in day, and figure out before the project begins how and where the work will be displayed. 


Planning

Project planning can be complicated. You really have to know what you’re asking the students to do and how they will present their project, long before they finish. I always do the project myself first. That way, I can see if it is feasible and worthwhile, and if it looks good. If I can’t do a good job on it, then I figure the students will be at a serious disadvantage.

Here is an example of how I might plan for a semester-long class of seniors (three projects, ending in an exhibition), and what I think about when doing so. Remember: simple instructions beget complex results, while complex instructions limit results.

Project: Quote Painting

Project: What Can You Hide in a Book?

Project 1: Quote Painting
For the quote painting, students select a quote of interest, then illustrate it by painting a portrait of the person who said it. I am thinking it will be election time, and there will be a lot to say. The kids will learn how to alter images digitally and how to mix paint. They will understand that edge is important and value matters more than color. Ironic and humorous quotes will be encouraged, hate speech is unacceptable, and lies are not permitted (spin is lying).

The quote painting is a great small project for getting things on the wall fast. It will take two weeks. I’m sure of that because I made one in two hours, and experience tells me that one hour for me equals one week for my students. We will display this work in the entryway at High Tech High. 

Project 2: What could you hide in a book?
In this sculpture project, students hollow out a book and place something inside. This is a cool assignment because the “book” is hiding something. When I made one, I experimented with six different glues, and the only one that worked well was rabbit skin glue (I really hope that it is just called that). I used a Dremel router to hollow out the book. This project, too, will take two weeks to make. These books will be displayed in boxes on the wall. I have already prepared boxes of many different sizes, and I can easily make more if necessary.

Students will brainstorm different concepts that can be represented in their books. We will critique their ideas in class. The students will make mockups in Photoshop of their ideas, incorporating qualities like these:

Something disturbing

Something that makes no sense 

Something that shows repetition 

Something that shows classicism

Something that shows mythology

Something that shows social injustice

Something that shows love 

Something that shows desire

Something that shows how open-minded you are

Project: Mini Kiosks with Video

Project 3: Mini Kiosks with Video

Students will begin the project by making a DVD. The subject will be artists and their work, or a variation of this theme—maybe an art style, movement or theme. I’ll have them pick an artist, and if the kids propose a writer or musician, I’ll determine if it is okay. I don’t want music videos; I want thought and artfulness.

Working in teams of two, students will have two weeks to complete the DVD. Too much time wasted will kill this project. Then, using graphics from the DVD, they will make a kiosk that will house their DVD and draw people to it. These video kiosks will be placed around the school, near wall sockets so the video can run continuously. I made the kiosk pictured here using a DVD player that my kids had, but we have old laptops around the school that students can use.

All three projects will be complete at least two weeks before exhibition night. Each student will write a review of another student’s work for the semester. These reviews will be displayed at the exhibition and on the web, providing a critical view of each body of work. 

Management

To be a good manager you must be consistent. That is hard; however, after freak-out deadlines and poor and incomplete work, I’ve decided to be consistent. It’s easier that way.

Setting Deliverables
I post due dates on the web.

Weekly Check-ins
I make a list of all the things that students need to do by the next check-in, and then they get 10 points if the work is completed on time. I use a receipt book from a restaurant and provide them with copies, so we are on the same page.

Quality Checks
The expectation is that if the student does not do his/her best and work hard, the project will not be displayed. Only three times in the past eight years has a student worked his/her hardest and had a project not turn out. This tells me that working hard is the key that separates the work that goes up on the walls from work that does not. The important thing is to communicate clearly your expectation of hard work the whole semester through check-ins and daily reminders.

Exhibition

Project: Analog Flash for Windows

Exhibiting projects is a difficult task. Sometimes you get lucky and it comes together on its own. Mostly it takes planning and skill to do it well. I personally have been knocked unconscious hanging a ceramic mobile. I saw stars, and if I had planned it better and thought it out I would have never been in that position, 15 feet in the air on a lift, unconscious.

Disclaimer: I am an artist. I have framed many art shows and hung lots of paintings and prints. I have built houses and have been in and out of construction for 22 years. So, I have an advantage in that I know my materials and how things have been historically displayed. Still, I visit art museums and science museums as much as I can, looking at the art or the science but also noting the way it has been displayed. I read about curatorial theory in Art in America. I check out the way store windows and interior displays are set up for new and creative ideas. What I am saying is you have to keep working. You have to keep looking at the world around you, and the way things are designed, to get fresh ideas for exhibiting student work. There is no silver bullet or magic pill, just experience and the habit of looking at your own work in a critical way.

If you are just starting out and haven’t done exhibitions before, make sure to have the students finish their work ahead of time so you can try different things. If you can lay the work out, you can see what it will look like all together. Symmetry is very important. If all the projects have a similar component that makes them look like a series, or at least pieces tied together in some way, it will be easier to design a display that expresses a coherent idea to the viewer.

A good example of this is a project I designed last year: Analog Flash for Windows (for a full description, go to http://jeffrobin.hightechhigh.org/index.htm). In this project, students had to work in pairs to make an interactive art piece that explained a physics or mathematics concept for installation in a 24” x 24” x 5” window box. As you can see here, we got a lot of different results, but they all look connected to each other.

Even if the works are different, you can hang them on the same level, and the cards that explain the work can be hung at the same level. All the descriptions should be written on the same size card, using the same font, size and title format. Go to a museum and take a look: symmetry!

Timing is everything. You need to plan to hang and display work, just as with everything else you do as a teacher. Figure that if you think it will take one hour to display a project, it will take three hours.

All of these things that I have suggested will come together in time, as you start to evaluate the projects you’ve done with your students. You ask the students to analyze and evaluate their work. What would you give a student who handed in late, unfinished, sloppy work that was poorly displayed? Now look at the way you have planned, managed and exhibited your students’ work. What grade should you get?

The easiest and most successful way to teach is to plan. I can’t believe I am saying this! I have really changed. Good Luck!