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The beautiful struggle of Jen Katrein's St. Charles classroom

As Jen Katrein gets peppered by questions, it becomes clear the assignment is a bit different from anything her fifth grade class has attempted before.

The mission is to build a free-standing structure out of index cards and tape that is capable of supporting a miniature pumpkin.

No, it can't be secured to the table. No, it can't lean against the wall. No, you can't use glue or any other supplies. Once all the "no" answers are delivered, students in the Munhall Elementary School class each pair up - with a classmate they don't usually work with - and the task begins.

Immediately, some of the design ideas seem fatally flawed even to the untrained eye. A boy and girl at one table begin to tape together index cards folded accordion-style in hopes of creating a tall tower that has cushioning to support the heavy pumpkin. Katrein can see it clearly lacks the strength to hold the pumpkin, but she doesn't intervene immediately. She waits until the students try to put the pumpkin on the tower, leading to total structural collapse. The students are already reconstructing their failed design when she steps in.

"Can that hold the pumpkin?" she asks.

"No. It fell," the students reply.

"Think about why it fell," Katrein says, and walks away to check on another team. When she returns, the students have adopted the classic posture of frustration. Heads down. Frowns up. Elbows on the table with hands on the sides of their heads.

Katrein suggests the team take a look at what some of their classmates are doing, seeing what is working and what isn't, then taking another shot at the tower. As the class period nears its end, the team is now on its way to building a less-flawed cylinder-shaped structure with a wide base. On a first test, a small version of the new design holds the pumpkin, invoking smiles of accomplishment from the team.

In that small victory, much more was gained than a tower that can support a miniature pumpkin, Katrein said. The struggle was just as important as the final smiles.

"That project was all them," Katrein said. "That was all kids asking questions and being able to be wrong."

Eliminating the fear of being wrong, limiting the shame of making a mistake if it was born out of honest effort, is a big part of Katrein's teaching philosophy.

"They have to know it's OK for them to make mistakes," she said. "And they have to see us, as teachers, make mistakes. If they have the model that we're perfect, they are never going to take that risk. I make mistakes all the time. But if they don't know that, then my classroom is a much riskier place for them to make their own mistakes."

Katrein's approach is born of her own past. Her two brothers excelled in school. Katrein describes her grades as "very, very average."

"I was a compliant student," she said. "I did what I needed to do, but I struggled. I worked hard for what I had. That helps me understand other kids who struggle."

That's a contrast to the classrooms of previous decades and generations of teachers. Those were classrooms where students sat in isolated rows. There was no talking allowed. And students spent more time hoping the teacher wouldn't call on them than raising their hands.

Not in Katrein's class. Arms shoot in the air and enthusiastically wave. And they are just as likely to shoot back into the air after getting the answer wrong as when the answer is correct. Students sit in group tables. They collaborate. They are encouraged to not just look at how someone else is solving a problem but help each other find the solution.

Katrein calls that taking advantage of each student's individual strengths. The trick is figuring out those strengths and pairing up students who fill each other's gaps. It's a technique Katrein learned during her first teaching experience 23 years ago.

She was working a job teaching inner-city kids from Ohio. They would come to a YMCA camp for a week to experience an outdoor learning environment.

"That was probably a more valuable experience than my four years of college," Katrein said. "I found that if you take a child out of whatever their element is - and these were kids from bad neighborhoods who were locked in the house all the time - if you put them into something that is unknown or foreign, you have to start with whatever their strengths are. If they start out frustrated from the get-go, they have nothing to build success on.

"Kids come from all kinds of different places. It's about helping them find where their strengths are. Am I musically or bodily smart? Am I verbally or visually smart? We actually ask students at the beginning of the year a series of rating questions. They rate their own strengths. They all know they are good at something. And even in a class where I have some advanced learners, I don't want anybody in the room to feel that those are the students we always have to go to for answers. And we don't."

  Jen Katrein works with a pair of her fifth-grade students at Munhall Elementary in St. Charles Friday. Katrein says her own learning difficulties as an "average" student help her understand and relate to her students who struggle with learning. Rick West/rwest@dailyherald.com
  Jen Katrein works with Lennon Pinarci and Kaitlyn Rhoads in her fifth-grade class at Munhall Elementary School in St. Charles Friday. She has been a teacher in District 303 since 2009. Rick West/rwest@dailyherald.com
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