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 the PBL Simplified podcast for administrators. I'm your host, Ryan Stoyer, CEO of Magnify Learning. Today we're talking about how to increase student engagement schoolwide. How do you create a a schoolwide culture where it's weird to be apathetic? It's strange to not be engaged and you want to be empowered, engaged. You want to be curious. You want to ask questions. And that's not just for students, it's actually for adults, too, right? You want your staff to be empowered and not passive. You want to be leading, not just managing or shephering or trying to hold together this this group. You want to lead your school. So, that's some of the things we talk about here. It's a core focus, but we're going to dive into it today. What's it look like to bring student engagement schoolwide? Before we jump into both the problem and the solution, though, I want to give you a few details on an upcoming webinar. If you go to pbwebinar.com, that's pblwebinar.com, uh you can register for a free webinar, and we're going to talk about how you can bring project-based learning to your school over 3 years. And what we talk about is this idea of how do you train leadership and teachers so that you have a sustainable model, not just a one-off activity, not something that comes from teachers pay teachers and you try it and hope that it catches on, but how do you actually create full implementation at your school and not necessarily wall a wall. PBL doesn't have to look like that. It looks a lot of different ways cuz we work with schools that are rural, suburban, small, big. If you've got a district of 16,000 kids, you're probably not going to start off, you know, January 1 or August 1st with PBL wallto-wall. That's probably not even a good idea, right? So, there is some kind of customized implementation plan though that's going to revolve around this idea of of training your teachers, but also training your leadership team. And you should have a leadership You should not be doing this on your own and we walk through how to do that in the webinar. So again, it's pbplinar.com. pbplinar.com. It's probably about 30 minute webinar or so and you get a chance to ask questions if you're there live. If you don't make it live, of course we'll send you the replay. All right. Today we're going to talk about increasing student engagement schoolwide. Now, we say schoolwide. We should probably define that right off the bat because that could be a school within a school. You know, that's where my work came from. I was a eighth grade English teacher at an urban school had 951 kids in the school and we took 25% of them and gave them project-based learning in their core classes. So that math, science, English and social studies, they got project- based learning and it was wall-to-wall for them. For these 25% of kids, they were demographically balanced, right? So they looked just like the rest of the school and we saw attendance go up a percent and a half, which is a big deal in urban school. And with 25% of the kids, we had 8% of the discipline. And what was an F school would have been a B on those standardized tests. So kids were engaging academically. They were showing up and generally doing what they're supposed to do. We still had that 8% of discipline because middle school kids do what middle school kids do. But it was amazing. It was amazing. And that was a school within a school model. So there's a lot of different models out there. So we definitely want to recognize that you could have a full school implementation. You know, if you're an elementary school, that's common common piece. You could have a separate school within your district uh also a common implementation. You could have um again school within a school and the secondary level uh is a common implementation as well. So when we say full school implementation, we want to make sure that uh we're not saying that if you're this high school with 3,000 kids in it, you don't have to go wall-to-wall PBL. That's not what we're talking about. But how do you get engagement through project-based learning? And I think it's helpful to find the problem here, right? We say, well, it's easy to say, well, kids are apathetic and they don't care and they're too distracted and they've got too many distractions available to them, so they're just getting lazy. It's like, well, they're not lazy, but they're not interested in jumping through hoops that don't matter to them. And honestly, none of us are, right? We want to know why we're jumping through the hoops. We want them to matter. We want there to have purpose. So, your learners crave that purpose. And a lot of times, they don't see that in school. They don't see a purpose to it. And that's not just those kids that aren't great at school. It's like even your high achievers that know how to get points. You those honors kids, they don't always see the purpose either e either. So a Gallup poll tells us that 47% of high schoolers feel engaged in school. So that's less than half. And when we really look at our work and we talk about our why, you know, we're we're educating kids. They're going to be future leaders. They're the innovators. They're the problem solvers. they're the ones going to be out there doing this work. So here's the question. You know, as you we somewhat defined the problem here, right? It's we can't blame the kids. And frankly, even if you could, it wouldn't be helpful. So how do we move to a solutionoriented? So let's start with questions. We love questions around here. What would it look like if every learner in your building walked in motivated, curious, and ready to contribute? Motivated, curious, and ready to contribute. And I'd say it's not a pipe dream and you're not just adding incentives or behavior charts, those kind of things that might modify behavior for a short period of time and it might be part of the equation, but we're really talking about transforming the learning experience itself. That's the key. That's where we look at project-based learning as an instructional model and the structures and processes to run your building and your whole school. Because engagement isn't just about being on task or being quiet, right? So, we have to redefine some terms. So, when kids are engaged, you know, the old school evaluation, you'd walk in and 75% of the kids are quiet and in their seats. That does not mean that they're engaged, right? Like, what is engagement look like? It's it's when they're leaning in. It's when they're asking questions. They're actually wrestling with problems. They they're actually taking ownership of their work and they want it to move forward. And we see the change happen. We see environments where It's not cool to be apathetic, right? When when you get in a group, there's peer pressure to perform, to be engaged, to be curious, to do your work. And no, it doesn't mean it's 100% of the time. You know, there kids are still kids. Uh but the culture would dictate that when you come in, we are going to collaborate. We are going to have personal agency. And a lot of that does, it comes from the authenticity of the work. It comes from solving real world problems, uh scenario problem, projects from teachers pay teachers are not going to do it. You might go through the PBL process, you might have an entry event, you might take need to knows, but if you're not really getting into the authenticity of the work where it's real world problems that are being solved, it's it's going to be unlikely that you're going to hit the engagement that you're really looking for. Again, I would say from your students and also your teachers. So, what is your role as the principal or the leader as we're looking at driving engagement? Because I think it's fair to say it does start with leadership. It's not just going to happen like this is why we lead because we're going to create structures, processes and environment where people can step in and live out their why and they can fulfill their purpose. They can have autonomy and they can be engaged. So you're going to start building a culture. You're going to create an environment where you trust your teachers, you invest in their development, right? So purpose, mastery, and we're going through Daniel Pink's book drive his three drivers for uh a purposeful vocation. So you're going to invest in their development. That's the mastery portion. You're going to give them purpose. And the other piece is autonomy is you're going to give them a process, an instructional model like project-based learning. And autonomy in most classrooms is actually not that difficult. We might have too much sometimes where, you know, I shut my door and I do whatever I want. And that that's autonomy, but we want to match it with mastery. And we want match with purpose, which is where we create a culture and a vision of project project-based learning. And the whole staff is starting to move around this. And as the building leader, your staff is looking to you for that vision. It doesn't mean that you have to present this vision by yourself. You don't have to go up on the hilltop and come down and and and have this vision that you launch out. You can have a leadership team. We love leadership teams. So, building principal, AP, coach, lead teachers. Make sure you have teachers on there. You can build a grassroots movement. You don't just have to hope that it happens. You can invite all these stakeholders in to build out this vision and you'll see them get excited about it. And then for sure it's your job to talk about the vision again and again and again. And if you get tired of talking about it, then you've almost said it enough but probably not. So you're going to say it some more and you're going to continually talk about it. But it's not just you. You also have teachers that are bought in at this point because they're on your leadership team. You have your APs, your coaches, which is you're all on the same page. That's a key key component to again we're talking about increasing student engagement. A key component to that is launching a great vision so that your teaching staff is engaged because when they're engaged now we start to get student engagement. It flows downhill. So here are some things that you can start with. You know that we love to start with why. I think every podcast guest that I have on we start with their why. And Simon Synynic has brought that to the forefront. hunt and maybe it's been overused to this point, but I just haven't seen it. Like, we need to understand the bigger idea of why we do what we do. Now, you can't just leave it there. So, we're going to talk about the why. We're going to share it loudly. We're going to share all of our wise and see how they connect and see that we're all rowing in the same direction. And then we're going to get to work. We're going to get into the details. Uh Simon Syn's got a line for leadership that I love. Says, "The goal is not simply for you to cross the finish line, but to see how many people you can inspire to run with you. I think it's a great definition of leadership.
you can do the work. You've likely done it in the classroom, right? You've you've done it. You've probably coached it, right? You've probably been an AP now. Maybe you're in that the principal seat and now you can't do it. You can't go teach 30 different classrooms. It's not your job. Even if you did it well, it wouldn't be the point of your job. It's how can you get others to be running with you? And part of that is sharing your why, seeing where their why connects. And you talk about that vision often and loudly. So the second move to increase in engagement is to celebrate small wins. And when you celebrate these wins, you're going to do it loudly. You're going to do it often. You're going to talk about these a lot. So, if you're walking through classrooms every day, which is a great practice, you can walk through, hang out for a little bit, and just leave a post-it note in the back of the room, one positive thing that you saw, and just leave it for that teacher. I know we've got one principal that did this, and he said that he had a teacher that had saved all of those Post-it notes that he'd ever put in. there and they were just these reminders that she was on the right track like you're you're doing this, you're doing this, you're doing this and she would of course do more of those things, right? But if we're not telling our staff like these are the things that are wins, saying them loudly, saying them often, share those in your faculty meetings, uh we've got I'll share this at the end, too, but we've got this one-page uh playbook for winning your faculty meetings. And one of the moves is to share out wins at the beginning of your faculty meeting and throughout. out, right? Share the things that are happening out there because when you share those as a leader, you're telling everybody like this is what is awesome. This is what aligns with the vision. This is what helps kids be engaged. And as you're doing that, essentially, you're saying, "Hey, more people should do this, right? But you're not telling people to do that. You're you're showcasing what's awesome and people are drawn to that. What you focus on grows is another way to say that. So, celebrate the small wins. Celebrate them loud. Celebrate them often. Celebrate those people that are out doing those those things. It might even just be like in your weekly newsletter. Like what you celebrate in that weekly newsletter matters because yes, people are actually reading those and they are paying attention to what it is that you're highlighting. Move number three, it's funny because all these student engagement, you're going to find out here in a second. You'll see the the pattern, but the pattern is that increasing student engagement is really taking care of your teachers, right? The first move is to appreciate their why and your vision. Show everybody how they align. The second is to celebrate wins. The third one is actually to protect your planning time. And I get pretty passionate about this actually because your faculty meetings should not be the most boring thing in the world. There was a study I saw that if teachers said they asked teachers, a ton of teachers, what's one thing you would change in education? And the thing that got the most traction was actually meetings. So if your meetings are just a way to tell people about the new district mandates or give updates or say like things that have to happen, all things that could happen in an email. You're missing out on this collaborative time. That's super rare. It's very rare you can get your whole staff together. So, you want to protect those times. This is where you want to start modeling some PBL moves. You want to be collaborative. You want to bring in voice and choice, right? You want to celebrate the wins. You want to have end products that that your teacher are creating, right? So, you want to start modeling the engagement strategies that you want to see in the classroom. So, how do you increase student engagement? You increase teacher engagement. You're going to show them this is what you do. And sometimes, I get it. You'll say, "Well, I don't have time, so I just have to say all this stuff. We just have to do some sit and get." Okay, but now you're modeling sit and get. You're saying, "This is how we do teaching here. This is how we do learning here." As opposed to blasting those things out in an email, making sure that people read those so that you can collaborate, so that you can give voice and choice, and you can do and model all those things that you want to see in the classroom. I'll give you move number four is when not to do. One thing you don't want to do is just launch PBL. Have one person take a training, bring it back, and then expect everybody else to do it. That happens more than I would love to admit. Like somebody comes to a training, they get PBL, they're usually an innovator who who can run with it for sure, but that does not mean they're ready to train the rest of the staff or that the people that were didn't go to the training, who by the way are not innovators, are suddenly going to become innovators and then try this thing. Your teachers get frustrated, your learners get confused, and after one year PBL's gone, everybody says PBL doesn't work. This we tried PBL. It's like, nah, not really. Not really. So, if you're looking to increase student engagement, PBL is absolutely a great direction to go, but there are some best practices to get there. And it's not, you know, hey, hey everybody, here's 50 bucks for teachers, pay teachers, or hey, Ryan got trained and go to his classroom and you guys all figure it out. That's not how it works. What h what does work is uh like our PBL model school down in Florida in Babcock Ranch, the first uh solarp powered city in in the US, completely solar powered. So, the school has to be innovative and it absolutely is. From day one, it has been. And Shannon and her crew down there, everyone's PBL certified. You know, they start with a book PBL Simplified. They go through the process. They have a coach that's PBL certified. They're well past the the three-year proven process that we have. So, they're actually using our resources to train their staff. It's an amazing ecosystem. And it's because at the very top. They understand project-based learning. They understand what empowered learning looks like, what engaged learning looks like, and they bring that into their trainings. And because they bring it into their trainings, and it's an expectation at that school, then the teachers do it. It's just how they do business, right? Because project-based learning can be a big shift for sure. If you grew up in a traditional system, like a lot of our teachers have, like they were really good at traditional teaching and learning, they did it at K12, they did it in college. So that's what they bring to the classroom. So it's a big shift to move to PBL. But it's once you've shifted now, it's just what you do. That's how you plan. That's how you look at the world. That's how you look at standards. That's how you bring engagement to your kids. And then once it's what you do, it's your culture. And now you have high student engagement all the time, right? Like it's the norm. It's the current that takes all of your kids through their day. And it's odd if someone's being apathetic. It's like, oh, Hey Billy, what's what's going on? Something seems weird. You're not engaged or curious today. And kids still have things, right? So, but you can have that conversation because the majority are empowered and they get the process. Now, you've got engagement every day. Her advice to you is to start small, but be consistent. Keep the vision, the vision, and keep moving everybody forward. All right. So, those are your three moves to increase student engagement. You're going to Start with your why. You're going to start with the vision. So, what's your teacher's personal why? What's your personal why? How does that relate to your school vision? Your teachers are looking to you to have the vision. Then celebrate small wins that match up that with that vision. Celebrate them in your newsletter, at PD events, wherever you can call out those things that are happening that are amazing that match the vision. Then you're going to protect your planning, your collaborative time, because that's when you get to showcase what student engagement looks like. with your teachers and once they feel it, then they can do it. So, where do you start? Take a look at your current environment. Who's who's doing it? Who's making this stuff happen? Find those people. Kind of do an audit of engagement as you go through classrooms. You're going to leave those post-it notes for one positive, one thing you like. But as you're doing that, kind of audit your current engagement. Then identify some of your teachers that are making it happen. Find them, fuel them, right? Put those things out there. Anytime somebody is doing something that's PBL like right is maybe they have a great entry event they bring in a community partner or they give some voice and choice start to lift those things up. You're going to build time into your schedule to talk about these things to talk about PBL to bring in collaboration to your staff. As you do that you're going to start to move everybody towards your vision. Remember Shannon's advice is to start small but be consistent. Keep moving in that direction. So you can start small but keep building. So think through that idea. What's one thing you can do this week to increase authentic engagement in your building? How can you create engagement? And I would say look at your teachers. How can you create engagement for your teachers so they can see that modeled and then they'll do it for their students? And once it gets to the student level, then shout that from the rooftops. All right, thanks for joining me today on the PBL Simplified for Administrators podcast. If this episode sparked something for you, it'd be great if you shared it with your leadership team. Right? Get that idea out there. Start to build some common ideas, some some of that common vision with your leadership team. If you don't have a leadership team, my advice is to start one tomorrow and get that team together and say, "Hey guys, what should we do?" Right? Is get a leadership team together and then start building the vision if you don't have one. But don't do this work alone. It's too hard to do alone. If you want to see what a full year, full three-year plan looks like, like I talked about with Shannon's group down in Florida, go to pblewebinar.com. pbplinar.com, register for free, go through the entire plan. We're going to talk about teacher retention. We're going to talk about grant funding of project-based learning. And again, if you don't make it live, if you make it live, you can ask all the questions you want. If you miss it, I get it. We'll send you the replay. All right? Make sure you don't lead alone. Uh because you do have to lead. People are looking for your vision, but you do not have to do it alone. All right? Head out there and go lead inspired.
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