Welcome to the Binge PBL for Administrators podcast brought to you by Magnify Learning, your customized PBL partner. From over a decade of experience with you in the trenches, the podcast offers 20 episodes for visionary school administrators exploring project-based learning. This is Episode 17 of 20: Collaborating Across Subjects and Grade Levels.
Host Ryan Steuer begins by sharing an anecdote about his experience collaborating with a history teacher, Mr. P, while teaching parallelism in his 8th-grade language arts class. Steuer was teaching parallelism through the Declaration of Independence, but history wasn't his expertise. One of Steuer's students mentioned that Mr. P was teaching the Declaration of Independence next door. Steuer realized that they were essentially teaching some of the same things at the same time. Mr. P was the history expert, so Steuer let him teach the Declaration of Independence, while he focused on teaching parallelism. This experience taught Steuer the power of interdisciplinary units.
Every administrator can create a culture of collaboration at the adult level that crosses subject and grade levels. The first area is subject areas, which typically applies to secondary schools. STEM and humanities work well together, and there are many different subject combinations possible. Even at the elementary level, specials can be brought in to mix subject areas. Administrators should foster collaboration between teachers of different subject areas. This helps teachers embody the practices they are trying to teach students. Steuer and Mr. P never connected the dots and collaborated because they were never given the opportunity to.
Subject area experts should get together once a month or once a quarter. This would encourage interdisciplinary projects that blend multiple standards. This is a powerful way for kids to master standards and see the context that these standards are in. To get collaboration going, put teachers in the same room and see where standards overlap. Look at dry standards and see if they can be livened up through collaboration.
Grade level collaboration can happen at the secondary level, particularly in middle school teaming. Collaboration is also natural at the elementary level, assuming there is more than one teacher per grade level. Grade level teachers likely already have a PLC and meet, but are they using that time collaboratively to look at PBL units? If there are one or two PBL self-starters on a grade level, they can invite other teachers to do workshops and interdisciplinary pieces, and invite them to do PBL moves without being fully trained.
A critical component of collaboration is time in the schedule to allow for it. At the high school level, academic silos and different courses that are only available at certain times can make this difficult. Administrators should look at the schedule with an open eye to create times for collaboration, especially between different subject areas. Grade levels also need a schedule conducive to meeting so they can plan PBL units and bring in community partners. The schedule can really squash the collaborative feel or the culture. Every great educational initiative or reform is driven by things that start to move schedules, like bus tiers, band, and choir, but there’s usually room to move things around. If administrators want a culture of collaboration and innovation, there’s got to be time for it. Interdisciplinary projects give students a lot of handles and teachers someone to collaborate and innovate with.
Administrators should look at grade levels, subject areas, and the structures that are either helping or harming collaboration between teachers. Steuer encourages listeners to check out the PBL Master Class for teachers, which gives a full overview of PBL from entry event to presentation. He also recommends the Binge PBL for Teachers podcast. The Master Class will help teachers jump into the full vocabulary and processes of PBL.
Steuer ends the episode by looking ahead to the next episode, which will focus on public presentations and their importance to PBL.
