PBL Starter Guide: Help! My Students Procrastinate Too Much!

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

Do you know when I'm writing this blog? You guessed it, the day before we're about to do a PBL training. But that's okay! Did you know that there are actually two types of procrastination? There's constructive procrastination and unproductive procrastination.

Here's how it works. Let's imagine that you give an assignment for a big paper. Both Student A and Student B put it off until the night before.

Student A, however, has been thinking about it the whole time. She also knows that she's a fast writer and she's been paying attention in class and doing all homework assignments up until now. She sits down at 8pm and types out her thoughts and finishes her paper by 2am. She doesn't get a lot of sleep, but her paper is coherent and she earns an A.

Now picture Student B. Student B hasn't been doing the homework and often falls asleep in class. He's not a fast writer. He sits down at 8pm the night before to write his paper and by 10pm, when he has still only written one paragraph, gives up. He doesn't turn in anything.

See the difference? While Student A didn't get anything down on paper, she had of course been somewhat working all along. She's also more aware of her own strengths and knew that as a fast writer, she could put it off. Student B, on the other hand, did not complete any of the thinking required beforehand, and also misjudged his own abilities to complete a paper in a short amount of time.

Of course, Student A is going to think that she's fine procrastinating until she's asked to write a 20-page paper and realizes that she cannot physically do so in one evening. Therefore, it serves everyone to not only teach students the content, but how to manage their own time in a PBL. Here are some easy things you can do:

1. Chunk the PBL and set multiple due dates.

Don't require that an entire project be turned in last minute. If students have to research, make that due one week. Make their outline of their presentation due the next week. Make their rough draft of the presentation due week after, etc.. If you REALLY want to help your students achieve more, you can grade each portion, return it, and have them make changes before moving on.

2. Use checklists for each chunk and check in frequently with students.

Aim to check in with each group at least twice for each chunk. Ask them how it's coming. See if they need any support. If they're rocking and rolling, let them keep on. But this will prevent students from going too far down an incorrect path (or no path at all), only to freak out at the end when they realize they have to (
re)do everything.

3. Teach students how to set calendar reminders.

Use Google Calendar or Google Keep and use G-Suite training to help students better understand how to set up their own calendar invites. Have them set notifications for due dates that go off 1 week, 3 days, and 1 day before something is actually do. BONUS: If your students use Google Calendar, they can automatically create a Google Hangout to discuss their projects outside of school time.

Why Educators Need to Know about Chaos Theory

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

My first year of teaching, I taught a student named Marvin (not his real name). He was young for a third grader, but a bouncy, sweet young man who read on a pre-primer level. Throughout the course of the year, he made great progress. Our school qualified for free tutors, and his tutor came every week and developed a wonderful relationship with Marvin and his family. His mother and father were incredibly supportive and read with Marvin every night, and we saw Marvin move up two grade levels in reading over the course of the year.

Of course, he was still very young and behind, so we (his family, myself, and the school) made the decision to retain Marvin. Surely one more year would catch him up fully and he would enter fourth grade ready to conquer the world.

That was the plan. Then, Marvin's dad went to jail. His mom had a baby and had to go back to work, meaning she wasn't home most nights to read with him and he went to a babysitter who watched several other children. His tutor moved on to other work and was never replaced. Marvin's progress stalled. Then, on the day of the reading standardized assessment, our school security officer yelled at Marvin to pull up his pants right before Marvin came into my classroom, so Marvin came in, put his head on his desk, and despite all my efforts to coax him into a better mood, simply filled in random bubbles on his answer sheet.

Meanwhile, I came across the research on retention and the potential impacts it has on student dropout levels. I still feel the guilt of that decision to this day. I know that I thought I was making the best decision at the time, and all signs pointed to it being a good decision.

I'd forgotten about Chaos Theory, though.

You've probably heard of Chaos Theory. It's often known as the "Butterfly Effect," where a butterfly in some part of the world flaps its wings and causes a ripple of changes that affect the weather halfway across the world. The mathematics behind this theory originated with Henri Poincaré in the 1800s, when he noted that small initial measurements that may not even be registered by astronomers can lead to enormous impacts that are then observable. These observable impacts happen seemingly at random, but they aren't random; we just can't always perceive their causes. He therefore argued that this made strong predictions nearly impossible.

In the 1900s, Edward Lorenz entered the field and coined the term "Chaos Theory" to explain why a butterfly in Brazil can potentially cause a tornado in Texas.


The business world studies Chaos Theory in order to understand that long-term predictions are difficult, and one of the only things we can predict with certainty is an unknown amount of unpredictability. This translates to a need to develop long-range goals yet create avenues for flexibility within the action steps to meet those plans.

What does this have to do with education?

A lot, when you think about it.

Despite the slow swing of the pendulum away from high-stakes test scores, we're still living that world where a handful of standardized test scores can make or break an entire school. Therefore, schools make very calculated predictions about who will definitely or can maybe pass and implement very strategic instructional interventions for that latter group.

Here's the thing, though: students are not test scores. While we might wish that if we simply apply intervention A, we will get outcome B, people are actually a bundle of often unpredictable variables. We cannot only look at students from an instructional perspective; for instance, what Marvin needed most that second year with me wasn't more instruction. He needed stability. He needed trusted adults to help him work through his feelings. He needed someone to realize that on standardized assessment day, maybe his pants could sag just a little or could be addressed without yelling.

That's what Chaos Theory tells us: academic excellence doesn't come simply from quality instruction. There are simply too many variables, many of which we cannot measure and may never even realize exist, that have nothing to do with instruction. We have to welcome, teach, and support the whole child. We have to build schools that are flexible to meet students' changing needs, sometimes from one day to the next. We have to have a common vision and language of excellence, but teachers also need to have the discretion and training to meet students' needs, whether academic or otherwise.

In short, it's not enough to even expect the unexpected in education: we have to embrace it.













Kate Wolfe Maxlow is the Director of Innovation and Professional Learning at Hampton City Schools. She can be reached at kmaxlow@hampton.k12.va.us.

Growth Mindset: Do Our Actions Match Our Words?

by Kate Wolfe Maxlow

The term "growth mindset" is a well-worn phrase in education. Yet, sometimes we see schools where the staff talks a good talk about growth mindset, but certain actions or beliefs undercut the philosophy. It turns out, this can actually negatively impact the growth mindset of students.

Why does this happen? Let's take a quick dive back into our Psych 101 courses. You might remember learning about something called "Self-efficacy theory." Albert Bandura (1977) coined the term to describe whether an individual believes that they are capable of completing a specific task. People with higher beliefs in self-efficacy tend to be more successful in school and careers.

It makes sense, doesn't it? If you believe you can accomplish something, you'll often work harder and seek out more resources until you finally accomplish it. If you don't have faith in your ability to get the job done, you're more likely to give up more quickly. In other words, self-efficacy is often a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And it's pretty obvious how this relates to a growth mindset. Young people who have a strong sense of self-efficacy often also have a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. They believe that they can grow and accomplish goals and are therefore more likely to persevere through obstacles. They see challenges not as barriers but as opportunities to grow and learn.

What does this mean for us as teachers? Well, lots of schools have recognized the importance of a growth mindset and have a lot of important discussions with their students about it. The question is, though, how often do our instructional and grading practices actually support this growth mindset?

Let's look again at self-efficacy theory. According to Bandura (1977), there are four main influences on self-efficacy. Some are more influential than others. We'll look at each one in turn and how it relates to the classroom.

1. Previous Personal Accomplishments

This is the strongest influence on beliefs of self-efficacy. If a person has been successful in the past, they is more likely to believe that they will be successful in the future.

As teachers, we might be tempted to think that we cannot influence previous personal accomplishments for students, but we CAN. In fact, we do so every day.  Except for the first day in our classroom in a given school year, every day we teach has a day that came before it, in which we designed learning experiences for students and gave them opportunities to learn and grow.

To help students be successful, therefore, there are specific actions that we can take, such as:

• Have a mastery mindset. Let students do assignments over until they get them right. Let them retake tests until they get the information down cold. I often have teachers counter this by telling me this undermines student accountability, and I can honestly say that this has never been my experience. Students work HARDER because they know that success is possible. The caveat is that you have to have interesting activities waiting for them when they meet a level of mastery on the current assignment. Human brains inherently LIKE challenges that are just challenging enough. If you just have a pile of busy work waiting when they finish...that's when they might stop taking personal accountability for their own mastery.

• Chunk assignments into small pieces and give tons of feedback along the way. This is the easiest way to build self-efficacy: have students experience small successes multiple times a day...by showing that you're there to help them. If you give a giant assignment and students don't even know where to start, they may give up just to feel a sense of control. For instance, I am not a runner. If you asked me to run a marathon tomorrow, I would laugh in your face. If you asked me to do a Couch2FiveK program, however, you might be able to convince me.

2. Vicarious Experiences

Turns out that we DO learn by watching others. Students are likely to learn vicariously from their peers and from their adult models. Try some of these techniques:

• Share your own (appropriate) challenges with students. Take two minutes to talk about your Couch2FiveK program (or whatever challenge you’re currently tackling). Let them know about that doctoral stats class problem that you spent an hour working on, only to realize you had the wrong answer and have to do it all over again. Show them what it looks like to persevere.

• Do more peer conferences. When you give a challenging assignment, give students time to talk to one another about obstacles and how they overcame them. This also helps build empathy and social awareness.

• Keep in mind how students hear you talk to other students. It's fine to have high expectations, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. But the whole point of school is that students should feel safe to try new things, and if they see their peers getting lectured without also seeing how the teacher supports all students for greatness, it's possible that students will feel like failure is an option in the classroom...and one that might be easier to take than not.

3. Verbal Persuasion

This is a fancy way of saying, "Telling students they can do it." This is probably the most commonly applied method of growth mindset, but, unfortunately, it also tends to be the least influential when it comes to building beliefs of self-efficacy. Quite frankly, this is why it's important to walk the walk as well as talk the talk when it comes to growth mindset.

Think about it like this: Remember that marathon someone was going to convince me to run? That person could tell me all day long that they believe in me and I can do it, and the only result will be that I will no longer trust their judgment if there’s no other evidence to suggest that I can.

It's the same with our students. We can talk about a growth mindset all day long, but if we're not giving students appropriate feedback and we're not giving them opportunities to learn from their mistakes, to redo work, and to keep working toward mastery no matter how long it takes...nothing we say will convince them.

4. Affective States

This is another fancy term that basically means, "Students who are nervous or anxious don't learn well." Self-efficacy and highly emotional states tend to have an inverse relationship. Some students, of course, ARE able to channel their nervousness into working harder, but for lots of our students, it shuts down the creative processes and they simply focus on doing things to check off a box and become abnormally concerned with whether something is "right

So, what do we do? We not only talk about "failing forward," but we cultivate an environment where failure isn't seen as an "end" but rather than a step on a journey. This goes back to those personal accomplishments. Here's what it can look like:

• Don't let students turn in sub-par assignments. Assignments should be redone and resubmitted until they reach a certain standard. Sometimes teachers will tell me: "But that isn't how the real world works!" Right. School is NOT the real world, and intentionally so. Our job, as educators, is to prepare students for the real world by teaching and modeling the process of redoing things until it's right. It's a skill that has to be taught, and if we just have students turn something in and give them a D or an F, we teach them that yes, failure is an option.

• Think carefully before giving "busy work." Are we giving classwork homework because it's actually something a student needs to work on...or because we want to give classwork or homework? Adding more assignments (especially if students have already mastered the skills) creates that compliance attitude that ratchets up the anxiety for some and causes others to shut down.

In Summary

What are we doing each day as educators to promote a true growth mindset? How are we giving students opportunities to be successful? How are we letting them know that we won't let failure be an option? How are we developing positive cultures where failure is a first step rather than an end? The more that we adopt instructional practices that actually promote self-efficacy beyond just telling kids we know they can do it, the more likely our students are to actually experience success.