Welcome to the Binge PBL for Administrators podcast brought to you by Magnify Learning, your customized PBL partner. From over a decade of experience, this podcast brings you 20 podcast episodes for visionary school administrators exploring project-based learning.
Episode one of 20: Why PBL is best for kids...and teachers and administrators.
Andrew, Ann, and Michelle are all now PBL teachers. They were traditional teachers and they were very good. They understood best practices and they were doing the best they could for kids and developed really neat senior projects, like they were doing the things. And then they found project-based learning and they found the way that they always wanted to teach. Each of them had a moment where they really felt like they were starting their career over again in a really good way. "How come I haven't been teaching like this my whole life?" comes directly from Ann's mouth.
Skyler, Tatiana, and Devon are all learners whose lives were completely changed by project-based learning. Skyler was that underachieving, underperforming kid who had tons of potential. Now he’s an Instagram influencer in Los Angeles living his dream life. Tatiana was that kid that was super good at getting points. She knew how to do it. You had a highlighted word, you wanted it in this box, she was going to put it there and she was going to crush it. And then project-based learning flipped her world upside down. Now she had to think critically and solve problems in order to get her points. Points weren't the biggest thing, she actually had to learn. And that took her a second, but she would tell you now that she's a social studies PBL teacher that it's the best way to learn. Devon was that C++ kid that was really great at sports, was a leader. He got C's because his mom said, "If you get anything less than a C, you can't play sports." So, of course, he got C's. But it turned him into a real leader. He started creating his own political rallies and bringing in the candidates to have real debates on real topics because that's what was important to him. That was just in high school. He's doing amazing things now. Every administrator should bring project-based learning to their school because it's best for these three groups.
The first group is kids. The kids in your school deserve project-based learning. The research shows that if you're a Title One school, if you're at a school where learners are struggling or maybe don't have the additional benefits that other students might have, that the research shows that they need project-based learning so they have context and what the host calls "handles for learning". If you are trying to do skill and drill to get your school to have a better state test score, the reason it's not working is because your learners don't have the additional context. Let's say that students are trying to study perimeter and persuasive writing. They don't have a whole lot of context for what perimeter even is in order to be able to figure that out as third-graders. But when you wrap it around this PBL unit where you're building raised garden beds for the local senior center, now there's all kinds of adult experts that are speaking into this work. All those additional details that might seem like extra fluff are actually the context and content they need in order to understand the key skills and details you're trying to teach them. Students also become empowered. So if you have any learners that might be apathetic or not really jumping in to learn, first they've got to go from apathetic to engaged. PBL does that extremely well because you have authentic problems that you're trying to solve. You give the why behind the learning and then they actually move from engaged to empowered as they start to develop employability skills and they are given voice and they're given choice in their learning. Amazing things happen at that point. They also get an introduction to different careers that they wouldn't otherwise. A lot of learners don't have lawyers and doctors and nurses and somebody from Department of Natural Resources in their close network. So, when you bring them into the school and into classrooms, they're starting to interact with these professionals. And the research again shows that they can see themselves in those careers and they're more likely to pursue the path towards those careers.
The second group that benefits from project-based learning in your school is your teachers. Just like Andrew, Ann, and Michelle, we see again and again that teachers are now teaching like they've always wanted to teach. They're inspiring. They're bringing in their content standards with real rigor. And their kids are learning the deep part of their content that your teachers love. It's really, really exciting. That empowerment piece doesn't just stay at the student level. Your teachers are now empowered. They become problem solvers. There's new intentionality. They're looking at their power standards and figuring out how to get their learners to master this, and they start solving problems before it gets to you. Wouldn't that be awesome? There's also a level of transparency that teachers eventually like. Some will shy away from it and a lot of times it's because they might be hiding some deficiencies in some of their best practices. But what the real go-getters will understand--and when the host says "go-getters," he means the early and late majority on the innovation curve--the majority of teachers will want to be really great teachers. But when you make it transparent, it starts to show where they might be lacking in a certain skill. Maybe it's in their formative assessments, but project-based learning shows all those things. And now there's an avenue for them to ask you for a workshop. "Hey boss, I need some professional development on formative assessments and workshops, what can you do for me?" And they become better teachers. And again, it becomes less emergencies and fires for you to put out.
The third group that excels with project-based learning--have you guessed it yet? That's right, it's you. It's administrators. You start to lead your school instead of just managing your school. There will always be some things that you have to manage, like teacher absences and schedules. But don't you want to lead? Don't you want to do the John Maxwell, you know, "leadership is the lid" kind of thing that you've been reading about? You want to lead and inspire your staff. You want to lead your school in a direction where you're in the news and the community has this great perception of, "I want my kid to go to that school". And people are fighting to get their kids into your school because you've got community partners that are coming in. They're having opportunities that other schools don't have across your state. The things that your learners are producing are solving real-world problems. Everybody wants to be a part of that. You get to stop putting out fires. The host mentioned it in the first two groups, but students go from apathetic to engaged to empowered. And really, teachers do, too, when they're just sitting in the back of your faculty meeting just putting their time in there. So, the host doesn't know how this applies, but once you start bringing voice and choice into those faculty meetings, they become empowered and now your school's running and you're talking about core values more than you are, "this is how you discipline," or "should a kid be given a pencil or not," and you've got a brand new future with PBL. The podcast sees this over and over again with the principles that they coach and take through this process. Once you have a vision with clarity, you can have confidence in that vision. And with the confidence you start rolling through that vision and things change at your school. It opens up brand new opportunities for you as an educator, for you as a leader, and for you as you look at your legacy, right? What is your legacy going to be? Are you going to build these really strong schools that maybe live on without you? Like maybe you move up the ladder to a central office position. Good on you. Like, happy for you to do that. But what are you leaving behind? Is it they have to start over because you were the emotional heart of everything or do you have structures in place, processes, protocols, norms, and agreements, and a three-year plan that someone else can step into? And not just anyone else, but you've actually groomed and mentored someone. That process of handing off the baton from your school to someone else is such a big deal. If you really want to leave a legacy, it's how do you leave that school when you go to the next one? It's super exciting. The podcast has all kinds of real-world examples to share throughout this binge uh podcast, and they'll keep giving you those and resources as they go through that.
But what PBL does is it gives, it shows and introduces students, teachers, and administrators to that brand new inspiring vision-filled future. If you go to whatispbl.com, you'll get your first set of resources to continue you on your PBL journey.
Tune in next episode where the host defines what is PBL.
That's just what was needed to bring PBL to the school.
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