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, we are bringing you 20 podcast episodes for visionary school administrators exploring project-based learning. Launch your vision, develop your staff, lead inspired. Here's your host, Ryan Stoyer.
Episode 20 of 20. Share successes. Welcome to the world of project-based learning. It's a wonderful and life-changing journey for both you, your teachers, and your learners. We hear it over and over again. You'll find that PBL movement makers are a wonderfully accepting bunch. When you go to a school visit or you ask for some help, they're always ready to help someone improve their practice, especially if you're moving. If you're moving, we're moving with you because now it's a life of continuous improvement. And it's different. People L is just different than other educational systems. Your school's going to be different. Your classrooms are going to be different. Your outcomes are going to be different. Your learners are just going to speak differently than other schools and other things that you've been a part of. You're going to love it. And that's why it becomes such a close-knit community. Every administrator can grow their PBL vision with these three steps. Step number one, share stories of impactful projects and their outcomes for students and communities. You need to share these ideas. So when you get a PBL unit that's just absolutely rocking it, you want to share that with your staff, but you also want to share it with community partners. You want to share it with the school board. You want to share it with parents. You want to share it with if you're a middle school, you want to share it with elementary so that they know what they're getting into. If you're in elementary, then you want to share it with even the middle school to say, "Hey, here's what we're doing. You know, how can we bridge this gap?" Right? And you'll have to word that well obviously, but you want to start sharing the stories so that you become the school that everybody's talking about. You're the school that teachers are trying to finagle in the background to get their kids in your school because they know it's different. When people move into town, they want to be at your school, right? Every parent's trying to get their kid in your school, to be in the lottery, to be in your school, whatever it looks like in your your world. But you want to have the community perception that you're a school that makes a difference, right? You You don't want to just manage an ordinary school. You want to lead an outstanding school and bringing community partners in is going to do that. But now you need to share those stories. I advocate that you have five success stories in your back pocket that you can bring out at any time. Right? So I've got those stories. I've got Skylar who is that struggling student. You know, I've got the highf flyier. Uh I've got the C student, right? I've got the the female student that was super needy, but the community helped her. Right? I've got a whole set of teacher stories then and principal stories. Right? So I've got technically 15 stories in my back pocket, but they're for different stakeholders. Right? So you need to start gathering the stories that come along with the successes that you're starting to see. The second step is to highlight testimonials from teachers and students about their PBL experiences specifically. And I would also throw in parents right here. Now testimonials are things that you see on websites, you know, when we're selling things and that kind of thing, but you're selling your school. You're selling the experience that happens. You're getting teachers and students and parents to buy into this vision that you have. You need to collect those testimonials and you can do it in a ton of different ways, right? You can just have um some a notes section on your phone that you pull out and when a parent says something amazing, you're like, "Hey, would you mind if I use that in my newsletter just as a testimonial?" And people are honored when you say, say that. Oh, um, well, sure. Can we can we try to say that again? And you put it into your notes and same thing with a teacher. Same thing with a student. And there's times to collect some, you know, some formal feedback and just say, "What are some things that you really like about PBL? What are some things that you wonder about PBL?" Like, right? Like, be honest as you're looking for feedback because you want it to get better. But those likes, turn those into testimonials and put them into your newsletter again and again and again. and to your teachers, to parents, again and again and again. Here's what happened in our one of our PBL units in third grade. Here's what happened when our sophomores took PBL outside of the school, right? Keep talking about those testimonials and collect them. Make it your new favorite thing to do, right? Maybe you collect coins. Now you collect testimonials. And you can do it right away. You can do it right away. It could be, let's say you have your teachers, some of your teachers read PBL Simplified, and you just say, "Hey, what did you guys think about Ryan's book? What did you like about it? What are some things you might argue? Uh you you could do the 4A protocol if you want, but pull out those testimonials even of that. Like, hey, we read Ryan's book and I really liked chapter 2 because of this. And now you can use that little testimonial with other teachers. Hey, Mrs. Smith said that she really liked this book because of and she's going to try it out. You're always building momentum for your vision because that's what's best for your school. Step three is you can and join our online community to connect with other PBL educators. You definitely want your teachers involved in there. You want to be in there for the resources that you can have, whether it's the courses you can use for PD or the group contracts that you want to bring out if if one grade level is struggling. So, you want to get in there. It's it's less than 70. It's 75 cents a day to be in there for the year. And when you go in there now, you have all the different resources that we use in our trainings. You've got all the resources that you can support your teachers with. with and you've got some people that you can start to reach out to. We actually have moderators that are in there for you and for your teachers. So, if anybody asks a question, we've got somebody in there to answer it. They never get just crickets. And we're typically pushing things as well to say, "Hey, let's look at the first 30 days of school. How can you ramp this up?" Or, "Where can we be grateful in November?" Right? So, we're we're always pushing things to keep the collaboration moving. And again, you also have just these on demand courses that you can take and all the different resources that we have you have access to. So, when you're looking at sharing successes, you're looking at how do you truly bring your PBL vision to life, I think they're key steps. I really do. Sharing those stories. Again, don't let them be silent stories. Like, go to the schoolboard meeting. You're probably going to be there anyway. Get a little time. Bring in your learners. Share those stories of things that are working. Highlight testimonials from your different stakeholders, teachers, students, parents. community partners, right? Grab those, have your Google doc all set up, right? And the in different categories and then keep pumping those into your ecosystem. This is working. This is working. This is working because it is, right? And as you get better at this, you're going to have more testimonials and more things working. And the third thing is to really just get resources. Want you to start collecting resources for you and for your teachers. We want you to be supported with courses, videos, resources, whatever you need. So, our online community does that as well. It'll be in the show notes. You've made it to 20 episodes. You have binged PBL at this point and you might be ready to go all in. So, if you're like, "Yep, Brian, I get it. What's the next step? I want to go all in." You know, maybe you're title one elementary or your secondary system or maybe you've got grant money for a big change and you're ready for this. If you've got the vision, but you need grassroots momentum and a clear three-year plan, you can have confidence that design days and a teacher workshop will be exactly what you need. At Magnify Learning, we're the best in the business at launching a PBL vision. We've been doing it for over a decade. We equip you and your leadership team with the resources, the shared experiences to create a grassroots movement that will last. Nobody else does it this way. You don't want to have your vision lose steam. You don't want to be the education flavor of the month that just fades away that teachers are waiting out because they know something new is coming. You want to have vision that leads to action at the classroom level and actually changes student outcomes. You want to launch your vision because you don't want to be a manager. You want to be a leader. You want to leave a legacy of collaboration and empowered leadership. Your tenure as principal will have a story and it'll have a name. Everybody's going to talk about it. So, let's make sure it's a strong foundation that actually changes your school's culture for good. It's what it's known for. So, we customize all of our agendas, our timelines, and our coaching. one of the only organizations that does coaching throughout the year for your leadership team and your teachers. We want to match the rhythm of your school and your vision. And that's going to be a little bit different than someone else's. So, we want to make sure that it sticks with your staff, which means we've got to customize those things. Your staff will buy into your vision if they get to help shape it and if it's clear. If you confuse, you lose. As our friend Donald Miller says, we all want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. And this is how you do it by launching the vision. So, in the show notes, you'll be able to schedule an interview. There'll be a link there uh to get on our calendar. We will fill up our schedule for the summer. And if you want to do those design days, you really want those to be done during the school year. So, you can go to one of our PBL model schools and you can see PBL in action while you're creating your three-year plan with your leadership team. You leave those two days having seen PBL, getting fired up about it, but also your team is. So, you're leaving with literally a grassroots movement. and people that are excited about moving your vision forward. It's not just you. It's such a big deal. But we're ready to help you lead inspired. So, just reach out when you're ready and we're ready to have that conversation. I'm super glad to be on the PBL journey with you. Please don't PBL alone. I've mentioned 19 different calls to action throughout this Binge PBL podcast. So, we're going to list every one of those in the show notes of this episode so you can go back and listen to the ones that maybe you want to brush up on or that you want to share. You can take the PBL master class for administrators, get that overview, and you might even take the PBL master class for teachers to see what vocabulary they're going to be jumping into. But you can lead with purpose and passion. You can make a positive difference in the life of your teachers and your learners. You can do it today. You can do it in your area. I don't care what the political climate is. I don't care what the overwhelm or the anxiety feels like. You can do this. We have model schools that are being led by leaders just like you. They just have some extra help. They have a clear three-year plan. They have teachers that are trained. You've got this. It's time for you to take the next step on your PBL journey so that you can lead inspired. That's just what I needed to bring PBL to my school. If that sounds like you, please consider rating and reviewing the show. It only takes 2 minutes to scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select write a review. Then be sure to let us know what was most helpful about that episode. Your review helps the next inspired leader just like you find their why and lead inspired.
