My daughter is starting middle school this fall and is extremely anxious about so many things that new sixth graders worry about over the summer. She’s on of those kids, though, that go to extremes – you know the type – the ones who love to shop of school supplies the first week of August, have their planner written out the second week of August, etc. These attributes only endear her to me even more (in fact, she reminds me so much of myself), so to ease her worries we went out to our nearest bookstore and she bought a book entitled “A Smart Girl’s Guide to Starting Middle School”, which I thought would give her something to read and something to help ease her worries. This it definitely did – kudos to the authors and publishers for helping high-anxiety tweens across America ease their worries with some pretty good advice actually on handling the peer pressure, rough schedule and other worries that come with the onset of middle school.

However, as I was reading through this book, I came across a section called “Teacher Types” which I, of course, read with interest. The authors of this guidebook broke teachers down into four different types, but the one I was most struck by was the one entitled “The Freestyle.” The teacher-type was the quintessential “free-love” type teacher stereotyped to let the kids do whatever they want in the classroom. The style is described as this: “Loves to brainstorm. Teaches by asking questions and fielding answers from the class. Explores different ways of doing things.” I stopped reading as a muscle spasm hit my stomach. “Oh my god, that’s me,” I thought. “But I’m not freestyle?” I got very defensive as I read on…”Pros: Lets students work on their own. Gives lots of feedback and support.” Oh, OK, yeah I do that. (feeling a little better) “Cons: “Letting everyone have her say can eat up class time, leaving some material uncovered.”

Once again, my heart started pounding…this is me. My students have never described me this way, (at least to my face) as a “free for all” teacher that let’s the conversation go wherever it may, but I can remember times when students complained that we had to go back to cover something that we did not have time for. I became very defensive of this small book that I felt was stereotyping me in a way that I was not appreciating. However, thinking more about this, I realized that over time (and from observing many teachers that have chosen to either use discovery-based, discussion-based or problem-based learning in their classrooms) it is all too easy to become too “freestyle” and allow the students to have too much independence. From talking to one of the teachers that I have trained over the past 6 years, she said to me, in all honesty, I think it’s harder to teach with PBL than in a lecture classroom because you have to be prepared, but prepared in a very different way. You have to be prepared for the unexpected.

Being “freestyle” does not mean letting the students’ ideas take over. The teacher as the scaffolder of questions must know in their mind the direction in which to move the discussion and when and how to do this without pushing too hard as too ruin the delicate house of cards that is being construction team of students. It may appear “freestyle” because it is not what students are used to, however, the teacher is doing a great deal of work. The other way in which the teacher must do a great deal of work is in what this book does make note of and the teacher must:

1. give lots of feedback on student comments and ideas
2. encourage and value ideas and insights
3. make note of time use and if time is short, change assignments regularly (the internet is great for this)
4. create a safe classroom community for students to share (must be a priority)
5. make summaries of constructed knowledge or have students summarize

If all of this happens, it is difficult for students to take from the classroom that it is “free for all” and they can leave their class for the day feelings content for the moment – and if they don’t for one day, that’s OK too. What I’ve learned from all this is is that the advice in that book pointed out the truth about being “freestyle” in some ways, but that the preconceived notions about that stereotype (or any teacher stereotype) really needs to be viewed from different perspectives. I’d hope that a student in my PBL classroom would at least see it that way.