Skip to content

Teacher pledges end to "boring" school work

Sean Robinson of Riverside secondary in Port Coquitlam authors a book to help teachers make connections, do more interesting projects
Sean Robinson
Riverside secondary school science teacher Sean Robinson with some of the LED lights his students worked on and his book, “Connections-Based Learning: A Framework for Teaching and Learning in a Connected World,” now available on amazon.ca.

I never really understood why Riverside secondary teacher Sean Robinson was so excited about what he calls connections-based learning until I read the first chapter of his new book.

Not a teacher — although I’ve covered education for more than 15 years — I couldn’t help but chuckle at his description of all the bad assignments he dealt to unsuspecting students and the horribly boring and non-edifying marking he had to do after.

But instead of wallowing in self-pity, Robinson tried a new tact, using project-based learning, which has now become common in schools. And he took it a step further by getting students to connect with global experts, organizations and other students for their research via the internet.

This inspired teaching technique puts teachers on the side as guides, puts students in the front seat of their learning and encourages them to work on something that more aligns with their interests.

When I attended a recent Science 9 class, Robinson’s students were building circuits for LED lights and working with a teacher in the Dominican Republic, where electricity was scarce and students studied by candlelight.

That’s a far cry from when I went to school and cribbed most of my research from the Encyclopedia Britannica I’d won in a grocery store contest.

Not only do I remember doing some of the assignments he described in his book —Connections-Based Learning: A Framework for Teaching and Learning in a Connected World, available at amazon.ca — but my kids did them, too, and now I know that teachers were just as uninspired by the tests and worksheets as the students.

Robinson’s idea of connections-based learning is a simple enough concept, and many teachers are already doing it. But in his book, he gives his peers a step-by-step guide, with a framework to better focus the teaching; the Kindle version even has links you can click on to get to the resources.

“I wanted to paint the complete picture and I wanted to make the ideas accessible to teachers,” said Robinson, who first put his ideas on a blog.

He says teachers are using resources available on the internet for their class but sometimes the effort seems overwhelming. He hopes his book will give them some ideas as well as a sense of purpose when they connect with others around the world. For example, he believes school projects shouldn’t simply recreate a diagram, such as an electrical circuit, but should encourage curiosity, exploration, teamwork and community service.

That’s why Robinson’s teaching often has students connecting with other students in developing countries, so they learn about challenges other kids might face and work on solutions.

“It brings compassion to a class,” said Robinson, who recently presented at a Global Goals conference in Doha, Qatar, where participants discussed ideas for ending poverty and tackling climate change.

While the book, written over several months of early mornings, is “not a money-making project,” he hopes he can connect with a few more teachers on Twitter and Skype, and who knows what might happen.

The book is certainly a conversation-starter for educators and parents alike about teaching and learning in the 21st century.

(Still, Sean, the erupting volcano is a fun project, so don’t toss it too quickly from the teacher’s toolkit.)
 

EXCERPT

“Upon deeper reflection, it wasn’t just the marking that was slowly killing me. It was also what I was marking. The stories, the worksheets, the tests, even the projects. Stories that ended with ‘and then I woke up,’ the erupting volcano. Math worksheets filled out completely wrong. Math worksheets filled out completely right. It didn’t matter. It was all like a vacuum nozzle attached to my soul. Boy, did it suck.”

– Sean Robinson, from Connections-Based Learning: A Framework for Teaching and Learning in a Connected World