Whoa. I honestly can’t decide if I love or hate Burke’s expert project. I definitely like the idea of students having the whole year to become the expert on a topic; a unit never feels like enough time to accomplish all the research standards AND have students feel like they thoroughly explored their topic. But having that in the background for the majority of the year also feels rather daunting.
Personally, I don’t enjoy giving homework unless it’s reading or unless it’s work that wasn’t finished in class. If this paper is always running in the background, that requires students to work on it outside of class by design. My experience (though only a year’s worth) has shown me that only a minority of students will do homework. (That is not a judgement. Many are involved in sports and clubs that require their time after school.) If I was a student, I likely would choose to not do that background work and when it was time for a check-in, I would do it all the day before (which defeats the year-long concept).
I would be curious to know what Burke does to motive his students from the beginning of this assignment. How does he excite them? Overall, I just worry about the motivation and timing of this project. On the one hand, it sounds great to not have to rush a research unit, but on the other it seems like it would be hard to make this assignment convincing.
For my in class activity, I am going to create a handout that can help guide students to creating a research question since that is where many students struggled in my student teaching.
Emily's Blog 
Hey, Emily!
I really related to your post this week. I also had mixed feelings about Burke’s expert project with the idea that it gives students enough time to dive deep into their research, but it also seems super daunting. I also HATE giving students assigned homework that isn’t just finishing up something from class, so I didn’t like the idea of this project happening 100% in the background either. I too would be the student who wasn’t working on the checkpoint and just did it all the night before, so I relate. The thing I also wondered about this is what Burke did when students just straight up weren’t turning their checkpoints in. Did they just get really behind and get 0’s? Just something I was thinking about. I also was wondering about how Burke motivated his students for the project. This is kind of why I felt like this project would only really work for seniors who are already pretty self-motivated. But maybe I’m wrong! I think it’s worth at least thinking about for other contexts. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Your pal,
Becca
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Hey Emily!
You raised some questions about Burke’s Expert Project that I hadn’t thought of myself. Now that I think about it, it really did sound like Burke had students do their checkpoint work outside of class. While I don’t hate the idea of homework, I also don’t want my kids to exercise their procrastinating skills or simply not do the work because of other commitments after school. I feel like dedicating at least a day each week in class to work on the project could help this. Also, yes, I also really wondered how Burke gets his kids motivated during the first stages of the project. I like the idea of your In My Classroom assignment because just deciding on a topic is hard for kids, especially when you will be stuck with it he entire year! I’ll be creating something similar.
Best of luck, especially at your new job! You’re going to kill it!
-Alexa
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I actually did a project similar to Burke’s Expert Project as a Senior, but we didn’t really start to work on it the last 1/3rd of the year. I actually loved it, but that’s because I picked a topic I was very interested in and had a teacher that didn’t try to sway my topic in any way. I focused on the role of women in Mardi Gras and how it’s sexist and a bit creepy in a “child bride” kind of way. On the flip side, my best friend started off researching general facts about horses, but through the insistence of her teacher (which ironically was my favorite!) that somehow morphed into bird migration. We were given time in class to do research, with many days spent in the library, but did have to do research outside of class. However, that was the norm at my school so the majority in the grade did it. All in all, I would love to do an expert project, but I believe it would only work in certain school environments, so I would want to feel that before I would consider introducing it.
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Hey Emily, you brought a good point about Burke’s expert project. I agree, it is VERY long, and I hate that about it based on the reasons you bring up. Most students do not do homework, so I would not feel comfortable trusting my students with this huge task all year, especially if it is something running in the background. Also, just like students, I get bored with stuff too. I would not want to work on something for this long, unless I REALLY enjoyed it, and I’m sure I can say the same for my students. Lastly, this idea of always having an assignment holding over your head is stressful. My favorite thing about the end of the semester is that nothing is no longer due, so now I can breath, but if they have an assignment from day one to day 180, they will have to be constantly deciding if they should work on this task, or just be a kid all year. Thanks for sharing
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