Welcome to the PBL Simplified podcast for administrators 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 this top rated educational podcast designed for visionary school administrators seeking to transform their schools with project-based learning. Launch your vision, live your why, and lead inspired. Here's your host, Ryan Stoyer. Welcome to PBL Simplified for Administrators podcast. If you are administrator leading a building or a district and you're looking to bring project-based learning to your school or your teachers, you are in the right place. Now, if you're looking for the basics, kind of the overview of project-based learning for administrators, there's actually a different podcast I want to shoot you to real quick. It's called Binge PBL for Administrators. Binge PBL for Administrators. You can find it wherever it is you consume your podcast. Just give it a search and it's 20 episodes, no longer no episode is longer than 15 minutes. So, it's meant to be bingeable just like you might on Netflix, right? So, 20 episodes that go over the all the different aspects of bringing project-based learning to your school or your district. Can't say all of them, but it gives you that 30,000 foot view to show you what it is you're getting into. And you already probably understand that it's working in a lot of different places across the country. That's why you're investigating. But now, you want to know how do I do it? And there is definitely a right and a wrong way to do this. When you launch a vision. You don't want to have a start and a stop, right? You don't want to have that hiccup where you go all out for a year and I don't know what to do next, right? So, we help you develop a three-year plan. Um, so that's going to be a part of that binge episode, but it's also part of the work that we do. So, go to Binge PBL for administrators, Binge PBL for Administrators podcast, and you get that overview. What you're getting here in PBL Simplified for Administrators is this is the ongoing podcast. This is one where we're going to have leadership episodes like this one. Today, we're on a specific topic. Or we're going to bring in guests. Right? So, this is to keep you energized, inspired on your PBL journey while you're implementing because you need a lot of inspiration. You need engagement for you as the administrator cuz there's a lot going on. If we can help out with design days, we'd love to. We'll talk about that a little bit later in the episode. But what we do is we bring two days. We take you to a PBL model site, you and your leadership team, and you get to walk around during a live school day. And there is like a dog and pony show. We're going to give you the panel of students, teachers, and administrators, but you also get a little bit of free reign. So, if you want to just go talk to a random student that doesn't seem to be paying attention, which is always what I like to do. Um, you can do that, right? You can talk to a teacher later. You can say, "How do you combine these courses?" Or again, find that student that seems apathetic and say, "Why do you come here? Why did you choose this school? Uh, why is this important to you? What are you supposed to be doing right now?" Right? And they always have great answers. So, I want you to hear that. We want you to go to a live site. And then we take you and your team to a separate room and we help you plan out the next 3 years. So you end up with a three-year plan so that you can implement with clarity and confidence over the next 3 years. It's really exciting. It's really fun work. Uh it's turned around several schools. If you're at Title One Elementary, I feel like it's a no-brainer for you cuz we're doing it again and again. At the secondary level, uh we've got model schools that are, you know, high schools that are doing PBL wall to wall in really neat buildings. So if you need some inspiration for your team, we've got the place for you to go. So reach out if we can help. We would be glad to. Today we're talking about teacher burnout. It's a real thing. You probably have some teachers that feel overwhelmed. They feel burnt out. They don't totally know what that means, right? If you ask them like, "What does burnout mean?" They don't totally know what it means, but they're in some way they're disconnected from the joy of teaching, right? We all get into education because we want to help learners have new opportunities. We want them to have better outcomes than they would had they not come through our school system. And sometimes that can waver, right? Again, disconnected from the joy. That's how I'm kind of defining burnout today. But I want to acknowledge that there there's a lot going on out there, whether it's political or district teacher shortages. There's a lot happening. Uh standardized testing and we've got to be aware of this for teachers. And I I I'm going to give you a couple different tips today on how you can bring uh your teachers some more energy, some more life, some gratitude, some thankfulness. And for us, of course, it comes through project-based learning. That student- centered practice is why we get into teaching. It's why your teachers got into teaching. It allows them to teach the way they've always wanted to. And we all want to be a part of something bigger, which is why I brought up design days really is you you want to launch that vision. You know, as the leader, I really think that's part of your job to launch that vision. So, you have to own it. You want to run it by somebody in your circle. Um maybe outside of your circle, you know, that's why we've we've got some resources. We can connect you with some other u administrators or principal coaches if you'd like or go visit someplace so that you can get that vision fine-tuned before you launch it. You don't want to have a false start. So there's a right and a wrong way to do this. But let's just jump in because I think it's really important for you to think through this idea of t teacher burnout. I think there's the idea of again I don't think teachers can define it. They just know that it's hard, right? And it's tiring and it's different. So how do we How do we address that? Right? It's probably not one conversation that you have with each teacher and then they're fixed, right? But there are some larger factors. How do you get to the root cause? That's what I'd like to talk about today. Like I'm not the do your nails, you get hot chocolate guy. Uh I think meditation is important. I think sleep's important. Right? All those all those things that increase your energy, I do think they're super important. Like I've got my own habits that that I run through uh to keep energy high. I think they're important. But there are some root cause pieces I think you need to look at as a school leader. Like what really gets people to closer of burnout is just a lack of autonomy, right? The overwhelming uh sense of responsibility that we have. And you know, teachers got into teaching to to teach a certain way, right? They wanted to inspire. They want to help their learners in a lot of different ways. And if they get disconnected from really like meaningful teaching opportunities, then they are going to burn out. You say, "Well, I can't fix that in an hour." And and that's right. Right. But I want you to to think through the idea of like, are there some books you should start reading? Obviously, we've got some at pblpress.com. pbplress.com that we've published to help you think through project-based learning. And I want you to start that idea because we know what burnout looks like. We think, right, there's frustration, exhaustion, exhaustion. Um, you know, teachers just feeling like they're ineffective, like it's not helping. So, we talk about well-being and seal for kids and for teachers, but how do you really reignite somebody's love of teaching? Let me give you Let me give you four ways. Well, three ways an example. So, number one, and again, I don't have any quick fixes here. Number one, autonomy and creativity, right? So, those two together are a really big deal for teachers, right? They want autonomy when they get into the classroom. If it's they just have to follow the scope and sequence page by page, it's hard to get really excited about that, right? It's hard to be creative in that environment. It's hard to see progress. And we know that humans, when we see progress, on a daily basis, it starts to bring joy, right? So, we want to see progress. And I think that one of the things that PBL does, it does give autonomy to your learners, but also to your teachers because they start to design meaningful and engaging projects that are tailored to their students needs. If they're looking at their students, they're giving them voice and choice, and they're serving those learners well. That autonomy and as they're solving these problems leads to creativity, and that gets people excited. That starts to revitalize that love of teaching. Number two, building relationships. Building relationships. And I'm going to take this two ways because when we get into teaching, I when I got into teaching, I used to be an engineer at a Fortune50 company. And my two favorite days ended up being when we worked with United Way. So I was like, you know what? I think I really want to work with kids. So we jumped ship and started teaching eth grade English at an urban middle school. And I wanted to have a relationship with kids. I wanted to show them the things that they could do. Like I'd seen them at a large company. I'm like, you can do this, too. and I would build relationships with kids and that fired me up like that, right? That fills my bucket and a lot of your teachers are the same way. They want to have time or an instructional model that allows them to have relationships with their kids so that it's not just the math and the science and the language arts. It's also like what this kid cares about, what they're passionate about. Starts to get them fired up and that fills the bucket for some of your teachers. The other relationship is teacher to teacher. Like do you have some ways for your teachers to not feel so lonely in their classroom. Do you have some way for them to connect with somebody in their, you know, maybe it's grade level, maybe it's content area, maybe it's whole group, some type of activity where they're fostering that relationship and the connection with their peers. So those relationships can go both ways. You know, as teachers are implementing PBL, we find that through the problem solving process, the workshops, the collaboration that the relationship with the learner, it it happens. Right? We get fired up and it fills buckets. I think you also need to look at peerto-peer. The third and I'll give you an example is the idea of relevance and purpose. Right? Relevance and purpose. And PBL brings that to students and I'm going to claim it brings it to teachers as well. Right? When the teachers know that we're solving a real world problem and you really are, they get fired up. They get fired up because the kids are fired up, right? And so you're you're filling that bucket and it's hard to claim burnout when you're filled with joy and you're doing the work you've always just wanted to do. I just had, let me use this as the example is I just had this fifth grade group of teachers that teach at Title One Elementary and they were so fired up. It was the whole fifth grade team. There was four of them and their enthusiasm just blast through the podcast, right? They were just they were fired up about the PBL that they had just implemented. They were fired up and they said this. Every one of our fifth graders was engaged. And it was like we're pretty engaged. group like we try to engage a lot of kids. We've never had all of them like for real engaged and they're still engaged even after that PBL unit. And the enthusiasm, the excitement that these teachers had like you could tell they were not burning out. They were filled with joy. And were they working less? I'm not so sure, right? That they didn't cite that. They didn't say, "Well, we're working less, so we feel better. We had more time to grade papers, so you know, we don't feel as burnt out." They didn't mention any of that. What they mentioned was the relevance and the purpose. So, That's going to be my example. So those are the three to reignite that love for teaching for your teachers. How can you give them autonomy and creativity? How can you help them build relationships so they don't have that sense of loneliness? And then relevance and purpose. How can you bring that back in? Again, we think that happens through project- based learning or some shift towards student centered learning. That's where we start to see these things really start to unfold. So how about a few practical things that can go really quickly cuz for some of that if you're going to implement PBL that's not like, oh, I heard this podcast, I'll do it tomorrow, right? You need design days. You need some planning that goes into that. You need to build a leadership team so you can implement well and sustainably. But here's a few things that you can do right away. How about you start with some small wins, right? Start with your faculty meeting, right? How can that look different? How can you give your teachers permission to be grateful for things? So take your faculty meeting and let's just say you start with sharing wins, right? You can do it in small groups. Do it with a do with a partner, do it with a small group, and do it whole group. Just right there, you're starting to show them that they've got wins each and every day. And for your faculty meeting specifically, if you go to our homepage, magnify.com, magnify.com, at the very bottom, there's a freebie on how you redo your faculty meeting because it's really the only time you've got your whole staff together. So, you don't want to waste it with announcements and busy work. You want it to be super collaborative, and you want it to fill people 's buckets. So, I think it fits this podcast, too, because your faculty meeting can be that time where they're collaborating and building relationships with their peers. How about helping your teachers empower student voices? When we give our learners voice and choice, they get fired up. When our students are fired up, our teachers are fired up. So, something as simple as, you know, just encouraging your teachers, and again, you you don't mandate this because people freak out, but maybe you just start by showing as an example, you bring in five kids during lunch once a month and you just have a voice group and just ask them what it is that they want and then give your teachers permission to do that too. You could do that too, right? And they start to get stories, they start to build that relationship again. They start to give kids voice and choice and it's empowering, right? This idea of filling your bucket, right? That's something we talk about magnify learning a lot like what are the activities, the things that you do that fill your bucket. Start to find out what those are for your staff and it might be different by grade level, right? That would be my guess or content area depending on, you know, what kind of a bill you're leading, but just even right now just on a note card, what are ways that your teachers get their buckets filled, right? What is it? Is it when you go in and you leave a positive note, uh you go and watch their classroom for a little bit and you leave some likes in the back, does that fill their bucket? Cuz it might, right? I had an example of one principal we were coaching and he he said one of his teachers saved every one of those post-it notes from the whole year. She had the whole stack behind her desk because every time he went in to give a positive note, it just meant so much to her. That was a way to fill her bucket. So, starting to get these tools of how you fill your teachers buckets can really get them fired up again. So, what else can we do? And I obviously PBL is is the direction I that I think fixes a lot of these different things, but what are some small shifts that you can do? Like maybe it's having your teachers try one small new strategy and then they share it out, right? So, in the next nine weeks, I want you to try some different student- centered strategy and then bring in a community partner. Uh have your kids work in groups. Do a collaborative activity. Run a protocol and have them do a couple of these things. Give them a menu and then have them share out. And then as that positivity grows, the gratefulness grows. It starts to fill people's buckets and gets people excited. Now they can switch. Why don't you try a protocol and I'll do the grouping workshop. Right? So you can start to have your team working together to help build a different culture. culture because culture is a big deal, right? Especially when we're talking about these ideas of how do you not burn out? And if you're in a state that has a teacher shortage, which seems like it's certainly possible, you want to make sure that you're keeping your teachers, right? And I've got to say, we did a podcast, I do not know the episode number, we'll put it in the show notes somewhere. Uh, but it was a school that had no turnover, right? I was talking to the principal and she says, "Yeah, we didn't have any turnover." Said, "What? I need you on the podcast, right? I need you on the podcast right now so we can and share that. And there's a reason that that happened. It it happened because her teachers were super excited to be there. It was a place that they wanted to teach, right? So, uh when you can start to build those things into your culture, it starts to create a current that things flow into. So, we're not talking about burnout all the time because you have some strategies already. All right. So, let's let's wrap it up, right? I mean, that's it. You've got burnout happening in your school or at least the words probably been said or maybe it takes a different term. It's, you know, somebody says they're exhausted or they don't have time for things, right? They feel behind. So, all those are leading to this idea that your teachers need something different and it could be the large instructional shift that you need. If they're teaching traditionally, they're just in the wrong vehicle, right? We believe that PBL is a vehicle to help kids get to SEAL. And I think it's also the same vehicle for your teachers. because when your kids are fired up, your teachers are fired up, and it kind of goes both ways. And you get fired up because now you're leading and not just managing. Wouldn't that be nice? It's a big deal. All right, so we'll put some some resources in the show notes for you to take a look at Design Days. Um, what I want you to leave with here is your call to action. I want you to challenge your teachers to reflect on one small change that they can make to bring joy back into their teaching. Like, let them know that joy is part of the goal, right? It's yes, it's standardized tests. Yes, you're Your school score matters. Yes, your kids need to be learning. Joy should be a part of that. So, how can they bring one thing in that will create some type of joy? Want you to tune in to the next PBL Simplified for Administrators podcast. We're going to have a leadership guest on. Matthew Taylor is a coach for principles and administrators in Washington DC. And I think he brings some great insight into how you can best be coached and how you can lead again and not just manage. You'll always have a building to manage, but you I know you really got into this work because you want to lead a group and you want to inspire them and I think you can do that. So, tune in uh to that episode and we'll help you 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. 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