Welcome to the Binge PBL for Teachers 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 episodes for inspired classroom teachers exploring project-based learning. Learn the lingo, develop your skills, teach inspired. Here's your host, Ryan Steuer.
Episode 13 of 20. Moving from passive learning to active learning. learning. Passive learning doesn't help you be not homeless, but I have seen active learning take a couch surfing homeless teen and give him a brand new future. After interacting with an architect in a PBL classroom, Austin found a passion he could get on board with. He continued to push and work with this newfound engagement and got a scholarship and eventually a full-time position with that same architect. Action like this will never come from a system that requires passive compliance to win. We need to create mindsets and structures that reward active learning. I believe that every teacher should shift their role to facilitator so their students can shift to learners. Shifting roles. It sounds like maybe it's just semantics like it doesn't matter. Maybe you've heard the term facilitator before and say, "Well, what's the big deal?" What I've found is that it's a huge mind shift and it changes the culture of your classroom, teacher to facilitator, student to learner. If you jump into my book PBL Simplified, which you got a free ebook copy in episode 5, if you missed it, go back and grab that. You're going to notice I don't use the term students. I use the term learner because student for the last hundred years had meant that I sit, I passively have words thrown at me. I tend every now and then I regurgitate them back to the teacher. the test or some person and I get points or I don't get points. When we say learner, it's really a lot like what we talked about in the last episode. When you walk into a learning space that's different, you have a different mindset. When your students come in and suddenly you're calling them learners, there's a different expectation. I'm not expecting you to get points. I'm expecting you to learn. I'm expecting you to apply. I'm expecting you to solve problems that are in the world. Teacher versus facilitator really goes along the same route. Teachers again for a hundred years have been the authority figure standing up front with the all of the knowledge ready to dispense that knowledge to the younglings. Facilitators different. You're still the authority figure in the room, right? It's still your classroom.
But now you've realized that it doesn't matter how great you're teaching. It matters how great you're learning. learners are learning. So maybe it's a protocol versus a lecture. Maybe it's a community partner that instills some kind of wisdom, knowledge, or like I said in the intro, maybe it's a community partner that inspires that inspires a learner you couldn't reach. Does it you still get credit for that in your classroom? I think you do. You facilitated the learning environment, the conditions for learning. You allowed those things to happen. In fact, you caused them to happen. at least you set them up really closely so they could connect the dots. There's a difference. It's not semantics, it's a mindset and it is a major shift in your role. So as we're moving from passive to active, what does it mean? Like you are going to I mean maybe you'll make the leap to change the semantics of go from teacher to facilitator, student to learner. It makes sense. And now now what are you going to do to back that up? Well, there are tools that we use for engagement and empowerment. One of those is protocols. You've heard me use a couple times probably in this Binge PBL podcast for teachers series. We love protocols at Magnify Learning. We have a tuning protocol where instead of just the typical peeredit where you look at my paper and I look at your paper and I say pretty good and you say nice job and then we move on with our lives, we've got a structured format. You would get two minutes to talk about your your idea and then I would just listen. I'm actually not allowed to talk in the first round. I'm going to write down things that I like about your idea. and things that I wonder about. And when you're done with your two minutes, now I get to talk and you're going to listen. I'm going to give you all the likes that I have. I like your community partner. I like how you connected that to standards. I like I like I like. And then I'm going to do wonders. I'm not going to say corrections. I'm not going to say things you got wrong. I'm just going to wonder some things. I wonder if you could have connected that end product a little better to back to your community partner.
I wonder if you've thought about this new community partner that I just heard about. I wonder if you thought about connecting to third grade cuz I have the same standards. So, likes and wonders. And then the last round, you get to talk about the feedback you just received. Oh, Ryan, I really appreciate you mentioning that the third grade standards overlap. We might do an entry event for them. And then at the end of that, you're done. And we'll switch. Now, you're going to give me feedback. I'll present my idea and you give me feedback. But what happens is it very structured. First round's two minutes, then one minute, then one minute, then one minute. And you run that. You can run that with 30 kids in the room in groups of two or three. And it works. You put the you put the stopwatch up on the board. I've done it with 180 teachers in the room in a gym even and it works because it's structured. It's clear. You know exactly what to do. You're setting up the conditions for success. And every time we run this in a workshop, it's our participants almost one of their favorite workshops is the tuning protocol. You always bring it back with you because you get so much feedback in such a small amount of time. As adults, we typically just talk and say, "Oh, I think I've got some good ideas for you." And kids, we just They might talk and maybe be off task or maybe they're not off task. They're trying really hard but they haven't been taught how to be a learner. This is how we do it. We put them through these protocols. We've got connections protocols. We've got um affinity map protocols, golden shining moments, all these different ideas, all these protocols that help you move from passive to active. It makes the learning visible. You can see the things happening. We develop norms, group norms that we all agree on. These are these ideas that we're going to live by as learners and as facilitators. Like we we grab these ideas because it helps to build culture because now we have shared beliefs. And these shared beliefs are what build a really great culture. So you've got shifting roles. You've got definite tools for engagement.
We're not just going to have you kind of go through the school of hard knocks to figure out what you do in this new role. We've got tools. We've developed those over the last decade plus. The third piece that you're going to bring in to move from passive to active is reflection. reflection and feedback because you're not just going to turn in garbage to me, get a C and move on with your life. You can turn in garbage if you want and I'll give you a C, but then we're going to reflect and give you feedback on it. You're going to turn it back in and you're probably going to get a B+, right? Because it got better. And then once you realize that you can't just turn in garbage and get a C, the next time you're actually going to try harder because you know that we're going to do feedback and reflection and it starts that culture like kids stop turning in garbage because they know that they're going to work on it. It's really a pretty neat process. And once you get past that initial portion of it, now you have culture. I like to say culture is like the current of a river. Current river is always moving, right? And if if you're in it, say you're in an inner tube, you don't even have a paddle. You're going to move. If you decide to swim against it, it's hard. It's hard because everything's moving you down that way. And if you're with me and you're rowing down there, you can really soar. But there's things that start to happen in your classroom in this culture or current. They're just happening without you. There's automat atically happening. Now, it doesn't mean that you're in the back with your feet up on your desk, crossed up there, right? It's a lot of work to get your culture set up, but then you get to live and and reap the benefits of developing a really great culture. Feedback and reflection are part of that because we're all working to get better so that we can do better, both the facilitator and the learner. So, you're going to ask at the end of a PBL unit, you're going to have a reflection time and it might just be likes and wonders again. Hey guys, we just went through our first PBL. What are some things that you like about it. What are some things you wonder about it? Put your like on a post-it note.
Slam it on this wall. Put your wonder on a post-note. Put it on the door. I'll look at them once you're done. And I appreciate the feedback. It takes three minutes. It's an exit ticket. And you just asked your learners for feedback. Now, they're going to be open because that's what happens in your classroom. They're more open to feedback. They don't feel attacked. We're just getting better. As the authority in the room, because remember, it's still your classroom. You want feedback. That's what we do here. You want reflection. So, you would expect that your learners would want feedback and reflection. Are they going to magically want feedback and reflection right away? No, of course not. But you're going to set up protocols and processes and norms that make it easier for them to want the feedback and the reflection to get it and start to understand it. You're going to make it clear and then they will want it because they do want to make it better and they want to have a great presentation for the community partners that are going to come in. It's an it's an amazing amazing thing. So, all of us want our learners to be more active. We don't want that passivity. But a lot of times we're doing things that create passivity. Sit there and listen and then tell me what I want to hear. Right? I passive. And how do I win and get points? By being compliant. You tell me to do this, so I will do it. Now, we're going to start rewarding active participation. Thank you for jumping in with likes and wonders. Thank you for helping me run that protocol. Right? We're those are the things that we're rewarding and the kids are being rewarded with that with a great presentation at the end. So, it's all part of building this culture. So when we go from passive to active, you're going to shift roles, not just in name, right? Don't let it be just semantics, but in mindset. You're going to move from a teacher to a facilitator of learning. You're going to create the conditions for success. Your students are going to move from passivity to a learner. They're there not just for points, but they're there to learn something that's going to help them achieve their goals. You're also going to who use the tools for engagement, right?
You're going to use those protocols and those norms, those things that are in every great PBL classroom. You find them there. And the third thing you're going to use is reflection and you're going to use feedback because that's how we all get better facilitators and learners. All right, the CTA today might be a little meta because you are currently binging the P the PBL for teachers podcast. What about the binge PBL for administrators? I don't think you need to go through it, but your principal might need to, right? So, does your principal need a PBL overview? Is your school looking to implement PBL and just doing it maybe haphazardly or just starting in one place or just asking you to do all of it? Don't do it alone, please. This is bingeable PB PBL podcast. Again, just like this one, 20 episodes. It It's not ongoing. There is an ongoing version, but this one is just the 20 episodes. It's the overview. Your principal can binge this and get the big ideas. So, have your principal get the fasttrack overview of PBL with the PBL Binge podcast for administrators. It's free. It's 20 episodes. They're all 15 minutes or less. They get an overview of how to support you really quickly. So, send them the link to the PBL Binge Podcast for administrators. It's in the show notes. It can be found where wherever you consume podcasts. You don't even have to send the link. Just say, "Hey, on your podcast player on your phone, would you look up Binge PBL for administrators? I'm doing the teacher one. It'd be awesome if you did the administrator one. We can talk about it. That'd be great. All right. As you're changing your culture, you have to also understand that you get what you grade. So, we're going to talk about what does assessment look like in PBL. So, roll right in that next next episode and we'll find out.
That's just what I needed to bring PBL to my learners. 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 star. 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 classroom teacher just like you find their why and teach inspired.
