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 3 of 20. How to grow as a PBL teacher. Southport Elementary School is a title one elementary in Indiana. They had the highest growth in the entire state on their standardized traditional tests. Those state tests that we all have to take. They might call them something different in each state, but you know what they are. They didn't do that with skill and drill though. That's a common myth. Research does not back up that skill and drill. In fact, when you look at the PBL research, it shows that students in a title one elementary actually excel because of the additional handle or context that PBL provides that community partners come in and tell you more about the background of the skill that you're trying to have your learners master. And you've got all these additional readings that go along with, again, the same skill. And as our students in title one schools specifically that now they have the extra background now they can master those skills whereas skill and drill is the complete opposite. But back to Southport Elementary, the highest growth in the state. They achieved the highest growth compared to any other school in the state by using PBL. They've got high socioeconomic numbers. They've got high ELL population. They're doing all those things. They increased engagement. They increased rigor. And they increased context for their learners. They gave them a why. But where did they start? They started by training their teachers in project-based learning. To help their learners do something new, the teachers had to learn something new. So where do we start to empower our learners? We start with ourselves, my friends. I think every teacher can grow into PBL with these three actions. The first action is to go way down into your core and it's a values activity. What are your core values? I'm going to walk you right through this protocol. Some of the links are in the show notes. Go to core's values list from James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. It's just jamesclear.com. forward slash core-values. It'll be in the show notes. Pick 10 of them. Pick 10.
Go through and some of them you're going to be like, "Well, that's me, too, but I want you to pick 10 and try not to tell yourself." But then the next step is to just have five of those. You're have to cross out five of those that you really like to get down to the true core of your value system. So now you're going to have five. If you are doing this in a group, if you've got co-teers, maybe you're at a grade level or you've got content or your friends that you're planning with, you get bonus points if you can collaborate and have some of your colleagues actually pick your five values where they agree that those are your five values. It really adds some color to this idea. So the idea of these core values is you have to figure out what is it that you believe as a person, as an educator that you're bringing to the playing field because we're going to figure out how do you grow as a PBL teacher. That's the whole point of this particular episode. Because you've got to grow if you want your learners to grow. Your adult culture will never, your student culture will never rise above the adult culture. You have to show a growth mindset so that your learners can see that and they get that growth mindset. If you just talk about it, if it's just on your bulletin board, it's not really going to penetrate, right? It doesn't get into their souls and into their beings, into what they do on a day-to-day basis. So, we need you to look at your core values. So, now you've got your five core values. Post them somewhere. Live those out. Everything that comes through, that's the filter. And sometimes it will give you a place to say no to things because it doesn't fit your values. But a lot of times you start to see things that there's actually a lot more you could be doing because of your values. So you need to be careful here. We're trying to grow. And here's how you do that. The second action is to gain comfort with this spectrum of control. What's the spectrum of control? We say that we're giving our learners control in the classroom, right? It's going to be student ownership. And that's important. It's super important.
If you look at your evaluation rubric, if you go all the way to the right where those top numbers are, there's likely some kind of student empowerment, student ownership piece, it's actually really hard to get to until you start to learn project-based learning. And I'm not saying it's super easy. But without project-based learning, there's really not much of a vehicle for you to get to those voice and choice pieces where learners are asking questions. So, that student ownership is really important. But are you just going to flip the switch and suddenly you give the keys to the kids? That's a really bad idea. By the way, we actually had a learner when I was teaching eighth grade who grabbed the keys from his special education teacher and took off and ended up in the ditch. Doesn't go well if you give the kids the keys, but you do want to give them some control. So, what does that look like? I put it on a spectrum, right? You're going to put it on a spectrum. There's going to be where kids walk in and they have to do everything you say. They sit where you say, they use Tyonderoga pencils. They're only going to do what you say and they don't move unless you tell them to. And then, and they've got maybe a little bit of voice and choice in where they sit and maybe like a book fair pencil is okay. You're like you're crazy. Yep. Use a book fair pencil. That's fine. Right? They get to sit where they want. They get to pick their groups. Sometimes they pick them, sometimes they don't. Right? So it's a continuum. It's not a good bad. It's where are you at? What are you ready for? What are your learners ready for? Because we're talking about growing, not just suddenly being right. You don't suddenly just pop into this whole new person. There's a growth process to this.
Trevor McKenzie who wrote Inquiry Mindset has a great visual for this and we'll post it in the show notes where he's got this swimming pool and he puts different levels of inquiry there and on the very first level is kind of like these these projects that you probably do in class all the time where there is some inquiry, right? You're all investigating something he calls it structured inquiry, he says that students follow the lead of the teacher as the entire class engages in one inquiry altogether. And then you go deeper to the pool and there's controlled inquiry. The teacher chooses topics and identifies the resources that students will use to answer questions. There's a little bit of freedom in that. You go to guided inquiry before you get into the full deep end. And the teacher chooses the topics and questions. Students design their product or their solution. So the final product is really up to the learner. They're all going to figure that out individually. And then the deep end is free inquiry. Students choose their topics with without any reference to any prescribed outcome. They're now looking at a problem and figuring out how they're going to solve it. They're diving into the deep end. And same thing, it's not that any of these are good or bad. They just are. And is if you become a rockstar PBL teacher, it doesn't mean all your time is spent in the deep end. You're still going to have some time in the shallow end, and you're going to go back and forth. It's a continuum, and you're going to grow in that. I put it in this growth episode because I don't want you to think that you suddenly have to jump into the D deep end, right? There's growth that's going to happen as you move into project-based learning, which leads us to our third action, which is to change at different speeds. What do you need to change immediately, eventually, and long term? You're going to change at different speeds. You're going to change everything at once. You're not going zero to and suddenly you're at 60. There's a process that's going to happen. So, look at things you, you are going to change. Are there things you want to change immediately? Like maybe the seating in your room is just not conducive to collaboration.
You've got everybody in rows and you're telling them to collaborate and it just doesn't work. So maybe just an immediate move is you move everybody into pods and now you move the four desks and they're all facing each other and suddenly you've got collaboration. It's a whole new thing you're going to have to figure out classroom management wise, right? So maybe you're making that immediate move and you're going to process that with your learners and you. So you figure that out and then you've got some eventual things that you're going to figure out, right? Uh, if you're lecturing for 45 minutes for instance, or you're doing groups without any kind of contracts, right? Those are things you're going to want to eventually move into. You're going to want to change that time for your direct instruction. You're going to want to develop a group contract. And we've got some of those resources that we'd love to share with you in our online community. And when you take those, you're still going to want to make them yours. So, that's going to be an eventually. You're going to work into those things. You're probably going to grab those and never let go of them again. Like, once you do grouping with group contracts, like things instantly get better. So, you're going to love that. That might even be an immediate that you move into. And then long term, what does that look like? When you look at your grading processes, like what does it mean when somebody gets a C in your class? Is it because they didn't turn anything in, but they know the content pretty well, or they don't know the content very well, but they turned everything in. Right? So, we like to separate those things out because we're going to start grading employability skills like collaboration and agency and presentation along with content. And you might need to look and tackle this idea of not giving zeros. Like, what is, does that conversation look like? That can be one that like blows people's minds. So, you're going to need conversations around that and that's okay, right? That might be a long-term piece that you're going to look at, but what are you going to change immediately eventually and long term? So, again, we're not just jumping into the deep end.
We're going to have growth as educators because as we grow, then our learners can grow with us. I believe that every teacher can become a PBL teacher using those three actions that you establish your values. Again, the protocol will be in the notes. Gain comfort with new levels of control. If you've always been the one completely in control of every minute, you're going to want to give some of that up. Number three is that you're going to change your practices at different speeds. So, yes, you're going to give up some control, but you don't just give up all 48 minutes. Maybe you start with a 10 to 15 minute activity that's a group-centered piece that is run by a protocol, right? So there's a lot of different ways to do this. But on the other side, remember the first two episodes, PBL is best for kids and PBL is best for teachers. So you're going to start this growth process and your learners are going to come with you. You're going to feel all the uncomfortableness and realize your learners are going to go through that too. But at the end of the day, you're also going to be more energized. You're going to be filled with passion and you're going to love the work that you do. So if you already have have the PBL tools from whatispbl.com, you're going to love the weekly teacher newsletter with the latest resources to help you transform your classroom. These resources are specifically designed for PBL teachers in the classroom. We're going to give you a blog, a podcast episode, and a YouTube video every single week. Again, specifically designed for you, the teacher in the classroom. We want to hit you with your favorite way to learn. So again, if you want to read it, if you want to listen to it, or you want to watch watch it. It's all there for you. So, where do you start? You have big dreams, but you have to crawl before you can run. So, tap the next episode to figure out where to start. 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 stars, and select write a review. Then, be sure to let us know what was most helpful about that episode.
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