As we enter 2026 (how in the world are we in 2026 – glad I’m not getting any older), I wanted to start off by wishing all my readers a Very Happy New Year. I also want to thank you for reading my blog, and allowing me to continue to contribute to the world of education, in my own small way.
As you know, I am passionate about Authentic Teaching and Learning. My bias is that it goes by many names, Project Based Learning, Learning Through Play, etc, but in the end what matters is that it is authentic. Make it real, make it count.
I have written before, on this blog, about how I pulled a group of fifth-graders to cover bulletin boards with paper in an empty classroom we were using for the Martian Colony Project. After thousands of worksheets on measurement, and passing many tests on this concept, they had absolutely no idea how to approach covering a bulletin board with paper. No idea how to measure a bulletin board. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
Instead of telling them what to do, I sat down and asked them what they thought we should do. After many suggestions/brainstorming ideas, they had an approach. Which did not work. So, we tried again. I never gave them an answer. I periodically steered them in the right direction with some questions. Finally they went to the media center, where the bulletin board paper was kept. They measured and cut off the paper they needed and returned to our “Martian Colony Classroom.” They stapled it up, and then realized that while they covered the length of the board, the paper was not wide enough to cover the width. More brainstorming. More paper. Board Covered. What I assumed would take at most half-an-hour per board, took over two hours for one board.
The next afternoon I picked up another handful of students from the classroom teacher and we covered another board…two-plus hours later. This continued for the entire week, until all five boards were covered. Yes, the students were out of the classroom for over two hours. But, after spending six years of their elementary education completing worksheets on how to measure, in two hours they actually learned to measure.
Make it real. Make it count.
Was this Project Based Learning? I would argue yes, because it was part of the bigger Martian Colony Project we were working on in fifth grade. Was it Learning Through Play? I would again argue yes, as the students were not being lectured “at.” They were engaging in a project they enjoyed. Was this Authentic Learning? Absolutely! The students were authentically measuring and completing a real task that needed to be done.
As a last comment…I consider my strongest strength as a teacher, and parent, is that I was lazy! Whatever my own children, and my students, could do for themselves, I had them do. (I never did figure out how to get my elementary students to write their own IEPs, or they would have done that too!) Was I really lazy, no. It took far more time and effort to have my students cover the bulletin boards with paper. Much quicker if I had covered the bulletin boards myself. But, a thousand times more educational and impactful to have them do it!
Happy New Year Everyone!
The Educational Journey 