The Straw Tower

One of the classes I was most excited about teaching was one called "Project Based Learning".  The idea behind it is that you learn best when what you are learning can be used immediately on a real world problem.  For example, you may not really spend that much time learning how to introduce yourself if it is just a chapter out of the book you are reading.   If, however, I tell you you will have to introduce yourself to, let's just say, an admissions officer at a college in the UK via skype - well, chances are you will be a lot more motivated to practice this particular language skill.

In training we had been told that the curriculum and lesson plans for this had already been created.  However, as with most things so far with this new company, we discovered that this was only sort of true.  On the shared drive, we found the project based learning curriculum file, but it was incomplete.  There was a general outline of the first project - to build a tower out of straws, but the timeline was unclear.  Was this something we were supposed to spend one 2 hour class on, or was this assignment supposed to last all week?  Initially, I think they had only planned on having project based learning once a week, instead of every day, so that might explain why in the project outline, it was supposed to take place over two weeks, and then later, it was supposed to be finished within the first week.  I opened the first lesson plan, which was written for students who had much more advanced language than my girls, so it would need major re-working.  Out of curiosity, I opened the lesson plan for the second day, and discovered that it was actually exactly the same as Day 1.  Apparently, no one had gotten around to writing any other plans beyond the first day, because every lesson plan for the week was identically to day 1's plan.

I realized I would need to really bulk out the lesson plan if I was going to make building this straw tower project last all week.  Besides, we hadn't even been given the straws and other supplies yet.  So I decided that we would do a lot of team building exercises to bulk out the plan.  The original plan called for group discussions of team work, but without the language necessary to talk about it, I figured why not demonstrate through activity some of the keys to teamwork (communication, roll definition, leadership, cooperation etc...).  Since most of the teambuilding activities I knew about required lots of movement, and because it was getting colder by the day in the classrooms, we went outside.  My girls and I were deep in an activity where they had to call out directions to a blindfolded teammate to get them from one side of the courtyard to the other without running into any other girls or trees or benches.  We had covered all of the commands in English, "go, stop, forward, back, step up, step down, left, right etc.."  but with about 40 students, it was hard to make sure they were all in fact using English and not peeking, but I was doing my best.

The vice principal happened to come around and wanted to know what I was doing.  I explained the team building activity to her.  She told me she didn't remember seeing this particular activity on the syllabus, by which, she meant, she hadn't seen any other teachers doing this particular activity.  I explained that the project based learning lesson plan only included one lesson plan, Which I had already done of the first day, so we needed to fill it out with other activities.   Besides, we can't do the straw tower activity until we get straws.  She informed me that there would be straws the next day, and that in the future, I should stick with what is in the syllabus.  I asked her if that meant she wanted me to deliver that same lesson everyday this week, since strictly speaking, that is exactly what was in the syllabus.  She stared me down for a minute. We both knew that she had never bothered to look at the lesson plans herself, or she would have realized how incomplete they were.  Finally she said, "You know what I mean.  Get these girls inside."

I gathered up my girls, and for the first time was truly disappointed in the new company.  I could understand and forgive all of the delays, and logistical problems of not having everything needed right away or completely ready, after all, this is Saudi.  This was different.  In the interview, the new company had talked a lot about wanting to change the existing model.  They pushed dynamic interactive teaching as a must, and made it clear that they weren't interested in lecture style teachers.  Now here I was, being chastised for exactly the kind of teaching they had claimed to want.  Suddenly, what I had begun to suspect from all the training focused on attendance numbers, and the haphazard way the books were chosen and curriculum developed (or not), became crystal clear.  All the talk of building a new model for Saudi women, of revolutionizing how English is taught in the region, was lip service.  They weren't committed to real change after all, only to profits.  Doing what was best for the students was fine, only so long as it was convenient for management.

The first attempts at Straw Towers, each group had 10 straws and 2 feet of tape.

Sure enough, the next day, the vice principal made a point of bringing me straws and tape.  I was the first to receive them, and as it turns out, one of the few who did.  Whoever had purchased the straws hadn't bought enough, so only about half the teachers got them.  The other half either bought their own or asked the students to bring them.  It was chaos to say the least.  Some of the students had towers with glitter and spray paint and used 50+ straws (which is what our syllabus recommended).  Other students had only 10 straws per group.  Every teacher had a different take on the assignment, and different ways of filling the rest of the time, though none were quite as visible as my courtyard teamwork activity.  One teacher had them design a dream home instead since there were no straws.  Another had them research towers around the world first so they could plan more structurally sound towers.  Another had them pre-design the towers and present their ideas and then vote as a group on a final design before building it. We made our towers on the third day of the week.  I was impressed with what the girls had created, but not exactly sure what I would do with the class for the rest of the week.  After all, according to the syllabus, we were doing straw towers all week.  I decided that we would spend the next days talking about what went well, what didn't and giving them the opportunity to design a second improved tower.  Partially because about 10 students had  joined the class who hadn't done any tower yet at all, and partially because I was afraid to really do anything else after my little run in with the Vice Principal.  This time, I told them they would also need to give a presentation to their class, explaining what materials they used, why they chose the design, and giving the tower a name.  Most wanted to do a powerpoint, and I encouraged them to try using a stop motion video app while they were building their second towers to add to their presentation.  I wanted to introduce them to new kinds of technology so they didn't always jump to powerpoint as the best or only means of presenting something (and because it would take a lot more time to build the tower that way).

Second Towers, each group had 50 straws, plus poster board, construction paper and 2 feet of tape.

I just so happened that the Vice Principal had come to my class while they were in the middle of this group work to try to sort out the attendance problems.  While we were comparing my attendance records with the official register (which was missing the 10 new students) and counting bodies to be sure we hadn't missed any, she noticed the girls using their cell phones (the stop motion app).  "Why does she have a cell phone out?  You need to tell her off."  I tried to explain why they were using the phones, but she cut me off.  "Do it. Tell her off.  The policy is no cell phones, and I don't want you to come crying to me and complaining later that you can't get the girls to put away the phones."  I wanted to assure her that I would never in a million years complain to her about anything related to  my student's behavior since classroom management was after all, my job, and that I especially would never complain about the students using cell phones since I used them a lot in lesson plans, for pop quizzes where they text in answers, for on the spot translations, for voice recordings, for any number of things, and that sure, they were bound to occasionally be using them for non-academic purposes, and I would as she said "tell them off" in those cases, but as a whole, the educational benefits to using the phones in class far outweighed the risks of having them around.  I decided against saying all this, figuring I was already not her favorite person, and so the best course of action was probably put up and shut up.  Luckily, the students, who had been listening to her rant, had quickly put away their phones, so when she insisted again that I tell them off, there was no one with a cell phone to tell off, and after a prolonged glare at me, she returned her attention to the attendance.

There was also another small crises.  One of the students who had the leadership roll for her group, mostly because she had the best English in her group, had taken the plans home with her the night before we started building because she was going to add them to the powerpoint that they had started.  Only, she didn't end up doing the powerpoint and left the plans at home.  Her solution to this problem, was to simply not show up to class at all.  In fact, she was so nervous about coming to class with nothing, she convinced her friend, also in the group, to hide out in the cafeteria with her.  The other two girls in her group were understandably very angry with her.  They asked if they could leave too, and I told them the had to do what they could for now, and then at the break (there was a ten minute break in this class) they could go find them.  After the break, they came back, but wouldn't come into class.  They were afraid of what I would do to them, so they wanted to speak to me in the hallway.  She explained that she had been up late the night before visiting her husbands mother who was ill.  I asked her why she was explaining and apologizing to me, when it was her group members who were suffering, not me.  She seemed confused.  You aren't going to yell at me?  I told her I was not, but that her group mates probably would, and should.  I told her that I would grade her based on her participation, and asked her if she thought she deserved high marks.  She shook her head no.  I told her she had also hurt her team, and that their grades would suffer too, but not as much as hers.  I told her that the worst thing she had done was not forgetting the plan or the powerpoint, but that the worst thing was that she hadn't taken responsibility for it, had made her friend miss class with her, and left her team to deal with it alone.  I asked if she thought that is what a leader would do.  She shook her head again.  I asked her what she thought she should do now as a leader.  She said finish the project.  I told her she had better hurry.  In the 20 or so minutes they had left before the presentations were do, that team actually pulled together a rather remarkable design, and a fairly decent presentation.  It's amazing what you can accomplish under pressure.

By the end of the week, my students had built 2 towers and done a presentation for their classmates on these towers.  They were sick to death of towers.  They made me promise we would be doing something else next week.  I wanted to move on as badly as they did and hoped that before next week, someone in admin would have sorted out the obvious lack of content in the project based learning curriculum and done something to fix it.  In the meantime, I was proud of what my students had accomplished, and looked forward to what they would be able to do by the end of the year.  Check out one of the videos they put together below.