Makisha Miller Blog 1

My response to Ken's challenge to revolutionize education is that I like how he wants to challenge and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence. I agree that creativity has been lost in education and I think that PBL may help solve some learning difficulties that struggling students have. I think that Spartanburg District Six is headed in the right direction with helping teachers to developing a PBL mindset for students. Promoting, developing, and supporting this mindset help supports the paradigm shift because there is a need for a change in the way students view how things happen in the world and realize that there are many processes that one has to go through in order to become a successful individual.

Ken Robinson's challenge means personally and specifically for my teaching is that I will be giving up the way I was taught in order to help students gain a sense of learning through research and rigorous problem based learning. He is not saying that it will be easy but he is saying that the old way is not working anymore.

My vision of a PBL classroom is students working together peacefully with one common goal in mind. These students may not get their answers the same way but that is okay as long as they were able to come to the correct understanding while solving a real world problem.

I will continue to foster the step by step explanation to solving problems but I will first give students a chance to solve the problem. I will also let students know that just because I have given them the steps to solve a problem does not mean it is the only way as they should have learned during the PBL process.

My greatest challenge would be keeping students motivated and wanting to discover ways to solve problems by themselves because they are so used to teachers and the internet giving them what they need in order to solve problems.