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 Steuer.
How do you get started with projectbased learning? How do you know if your district or school is ready? Now, we've got an app for that. You go to pblscore.com. pblscore.com. Fill out a couple questions and you get a readiness score. Are you ready to start PBL? And really, where are you ready? And where do you have some areas of growth? Because it's not like it's yes or no. You likely have some areas that you've shored up and you're doing great work and it's going to complement the work for project. learning. You also have some areas where you might need to yeah grow into some things and that's fine too. But if you really want to know, go to pblscore.com. pblscore.com. Welcome to the PBL Simplified podcast. I'm your host, Ryan Stoyer, CEO of Magnify Learning. I love all things project-based learning. I love hearing stories, student stories, teacher stories, district stories. I love going to visit schools.
Uh I love seeing more and more just news stories of project based learning schools are doing amazing things and they're so amazing that they get news coverage right. so whether it's a STEM girls school uh connecting with their founders which is Grace James Academy uh out of Louisville amazing work they've got these purple lab coats and they connected with their founder and got to ask them questions right? like why did you start this school and they got to hear the vision from the founder of their school how neat is that? It was amazing um to another story uh just east of them in near Lexington, Kentucky where their small town didn't have a flag, right? Like Lexington proper has a flag. It's pretty cool. It's got a horse on there. Makes a lot of sense, right? Um but their little town didn't. So the kids, sixth graders, thought, "Well, that doesn't make sense. Why don't we have a flag? Everybody else has a flag." So they went to city council. They talked to the mayor and said, "We'd like to have a flag." It's a great Great. They pitched it. They created the flag. They had this big ceremony. People were crying. Some sixth grade girl says like, "This is an amazing educational opportunity. Like, when my grandkids are around here, I can show them this flag and let them know that I was a part of creating it." And tears flowed. And that is project-based learning is beyond the classroom. Like, yes, they tackled hard academics. Yes, they took quizzes and tests. Yes, they had workshops upon workshops to get better. better at their academic skills and they had some amazing opportunities because they're solving real world problems out in their specific city. That's really cool. That's the work I love.
So, if you're wondering how do you start a PBL movement of your own right where you're at, that's what this episode's about. How do you plan a PBL movement? Number one, don't wait. Don't wait till summer. Like, yes, that's when all PD happens. I get it. That's when a lot of our work has happens. Uh but what we've been doing is more and more work during the school year with leadership teams. When we started Magnify Learning, it was teachers teaching teachers. We'd get together with other groups of teachers and say, "Hey, what did you what did you learn? What went well? What didn't go well?" And we would learn from each other. And we started out very grassroots just like that. Teachers would get together and teach teachers. And what we found is that we had some amazing grassroots environments. But then if a principal left, they disappeared. Or we had some lonewolf PBLers that were doing amazing work, maybe despite the administrative team. They might allow it, but they didn't enhance it. So we said, "Wow, what would happen if we worked with leadership teams?" So we've been doing that for oh, I don't know, seven years or so, over half a decade at least. And we're bringing leadership teams in during the school year to see PBL in action during a live school day. So you come to one of our PBL model schools for two days. You and your leadership team, that means principal, AP, coaches, teachers, lead teachers, all innovators. This is the front end of the innovation curve. That's who you're getting excited. Like you'll get to the lagards eventually, but this is not the work that lagards want to be a part of. Early late majority, like take pictures for them so you can come back and present it to them, but this is not their work. This is innovator work. So bring the innovators and that's okay. The innovators want to do the extra work to help the early majority come on board. That's a whole another talk actually. Maybe I'll make that a bullet point right now. Uh but the first thing you want to do is get out and see this work. So don't wait for the summer right now. Plan something for a second semester. Reach out. We'll set it up.
It'll be awesome. Uh we've got a testimony on our website. Uh Nathan Mley talks about this. He says it completely changed my career. That's exact I think that's an exact quote because he said that I was like what he's like yeah it did like he didn't know like it was exactly what he wanted out of education and he'd never seen it before. You might be the same way. You're always pushing up against this ceiling of what education could be and you're pushing and pushing and you push a little bit and a little more and you're it's constant resistance and that's the fight. That's the good fight. You should fight that fight. But there's also places out there that have been doing this for a decade and you can learn so much in just two days. Just the inspiration just hearing kids, students lead the need to know session. We actually let them lead the need to know session. They talk to you. They get your need to knows. They tell you about how things work. You get a panel of students, teachers, administrators. You get to walk through the day really however you want, right? So it's not just kind of the dog and pony show stuff. Like go and find the kid that you think isn't paying attention and ask Ask them like what's the culture like here? Ask every type of kid, however you want to ask. And then you come back and we facilitate the learning for your team. How are you going to bring this back? When you walk out there, what are the parts you love? What do you want to bring back? What are the parts you have questions about? Right? We don't expect everything to be perfect. In a model school, you should have questions. You should say, "Well, I think we can bring some of these things back, but maybe not that." Okay, great. Now, we're building your plan. You leave with a three-year plan. So, that's a long answer to say don't wait for summer. Like, get your leadership team moving now, especially that first part of second semester.
You've got some room. Yes, I know it's hard to get subs. Yes, it's hard to be out of the building. I'm telling you, it's worth it. It's worth the two days. What are you going to do during those two days is another part of planning this PBL movement because the second point is you need a mission, vision, values. You might have mission vision that you generally know, but it needs to be written down. It needs to be created collaboratively. And it needs to be something you actually use, not something that's like framed on your book case that nobody really knows about. Needs to be something you live. Uh some high-flying leaders have three things they say all the time. I mentioned this in last week's podcast. You can just ask them, "Hey Josh, what are the three things that are important in your school?" And he'll name those three. And you go to his teachers, what are the three things that are important in the school? And they'll name those three or they'll at least get two out of three and they'll say then they'll get close to the third one because they say them all the time. The teachers believe them, administrators believe in them, and they all talk about them all the time because that's who they are. It's who they are. And you might have that idea of who you are. But you need to collaboratively go through that process with your leadership team so that you can have this we of who we are because that's more powerful. You don't want to be dragging sta staff along on this vision that you have. You want to be walking with them. You want to be leading them. So, we help you with mission, vision, and values. We help you with hopes and fears because this new work sometimes is is scary work, right? So, let's let's delineate between these things. What are the things you're super hopeful for? I'm hoping that we're going to raise engagement, which will increase test scores, which will increase employability skills, which will give our kids more opportunities as they move forward in their school. career and beyond. That's right. Let's talk about those things. And what are you scared of? I'm scared it might be too much. I'm scared that our staff can't take another thing. I've got a little bit of fear around like what does this look like with our new curriculum? Yeah, for sure you do. You should. And that's okay. And we walk you through those. And now you as the leader, you now know what your leadership team is thinking about. You know what they're excited about. You know what they're wondering about. And as they're wondering and hearing about things for teachers, too. Like, I don't know how Mrs. Smith is going to take this. Great. Let's get that out in the open. By the way, Mrs. Smith doesn't have to get on board right away. It's okay.
The next thing you want to have when you're planning a PBL movement is teacher voice. And I alluded to the leadership team. On your leadership team, you want to have teachers on there. You want to have that teacher voice there. You want to have them on board co-creating with you because when you leave that leadership team meeting, The first thing that happens is teachers go and ask teachers, hey, how did it go? What's happening? What are you guys talking about? They don't always go to you. They don't always go to your your office staff, but they will go to teachers. And then those first teachers are the ones that are going to start implementing first. And then you're going to see PBL happening in your school. And that is exactly what your early majority need to see. They don't need the school visit because they don't care if it works in the school, you know, two hours away. They want to know, does it work in my school, in my classroom? So, they need to see your first teachers implement PBL right there in your school, in your community. That's what moves the needle for them. And when it's awesome and you invite them to it and you make it transparent and say, "Hey, it's not going to be perfect, but do you see where it's going?" They'll go to the training in the summer. Like, we intentionally build this out. We help you with this process. Like, how do you invite the next group? This is stuff we're super passionate about. So, teacher voice has to be in this process.
Now, the fifth thing I have is needs to be a clear, written, three-year plan. You want to look three years out. Your teachers want to know that there's a three-year plan. They want to know that this isn't going to fade after a little bit. That this isn't a top- down mandate, that when it gets hard, we're going to stop. They want to know that there's ongoing coaching, ongoing training for three years. And after three years, you're sustainable. You have PBL certified teachers in your building that can train new hires. You a leadership team that's thought through the structure and processes of how to train people, how to innovate internally, so you don't need us to come in and push the work. Your team can do it. And when you present that to your staff, that's different than most initiatives. Most initiatives are, hey, here's district. We got to do this. And you might frame it better than that. I hope you do. But it still just feels like a top- down mandate that we have to do. And some of your teachers will wait it out. I think somewhat rightfully so. I know my mentor teacher did when project-based learning came along. Actually, I was super excited because I saw that traditional teaching wasn't working for our kids. You know, 75% free and reduced lunch uh urban school in southwest side of Indianapolis. Like traditional teaching wasn't wasn't their jam. I wasn't reaching them. So, I wanted something different. Project based learning came along. I said, "Bruce, I think this is it. This is amazing. Like, this is why I left engineering so I could teach this way." He's like, "Ah, I'm going to wait this one out." I was like, "What do you mean? Like the principal said we have to do this. Got to do at least one, right?" He's like, "Yeah, I'm going to wait it out." And he did. And he was right. It went away, right? I held on to it like we made our own school within a school and we had a percent and a half higher in attendance. We had 25% of the kids and 8% of the discipline. And in F school, we would have been a B. So, I found it. I grabbed it. It worked. But Bruce was right like he was not fully trained. I think it was a good move for him to wait it out. Actually, he didn't have the training. It was just, hey, do this, do this thing. Some of your staff will see that. We know the revolving door of educational initiatives. We know that things come and go. So, it's natural to think that, but when you present a three-year plan that's clear and written out and you can explain it and your leadership team can explain it from the coaches to the teachers, they can all explain it. Then people go, "Oh, well that's that seems different." And you get that whole early majority that say, "I'm on board with that." And they're ready. Now, are your lagards ready yet? Probably not. That's not how it works. They're going to have to wait until it's completely like in your culture, in your school, and then they have no choice but to move into this. And we've got ways that they can kind of ooch into it. They can just make small steps towards project-based learning. PBL shifts is what we call them. And so, they'll make some shifts But don't expect them to be ridiculously excited on day one. Like don't worry about them yet. You can go calm them down if you want. But sometimes we get partners that are ah Mrs. Smith is just not on board. Like of course not, right? She's on the back end of the innovation curve. This isn't innovation. She's not supposed to be on board yet. There's hundreds of years of of uh implementation curves that say that there's no way she would be on board by now. Oh, okay. When's she going to get on board? Maybe never, but definitely not right now, right? We'd expect her to make some small shifts and then get on board.
So, you need teacher voice. You need a clear written plan. And we talked about the leadership team. That was actually supposed to be my last point, but I couldn't wait because it's super important. Last week, I talked about top 10% schools and they have leadership teams because you can't do this work all by yourself. There's too much work to do. You need a leadership team and you probably need teams underneath that leadership team, reflective teams, teams that are working on PLC's, teams that are working with community partners. You probably need teams on top of teams because there's too much work to do to do it yourself. Top 10% leaders know that. We'd love to help you with that. That is how I would roughly plan a PBL movement. Those are the key ingredients to a PBL movement. Again, if you want to see if you're ready for it, go to pblscore.com. We've got this whole interactive scorecard that you you create. You answer 20 or so questions and then it gives you outputs on the things that you're doing really well. It gives you resources for how to take those farther and beyond. When there are things that are low or in the kind of mid-range, there are separate resources for those free resources that we have that it gives you that output and you can go walk the path with those resources. It's really pretty neat. I'm super excited about it. So, pblscore.com, go find out if you're ready for a L movement. I think you are. It's just where are you ready, right? And where do you need some additional helps?
And remember, don't wait for the summer. If you're listening to this in May, you should probably wait for the summer. But if you're listening to this in January, February, like, let's do it right now. Do it while your leadership team can go and see the work in person and feel what it's supposed to feel like. They won't forget it. They won't be able to forget it. Have them take pictures, take video, interview students, take it back. with them. It is a moving experience every single time. And if you're like, Ryan, that sounds like it's like it's hyperbole. I've never had an experience like that in education PD. Test me, right? Like, test us on that. Like, if you need a money back guarantee, we'll do that because every single time we take a group to our PBLO model school and do these design days, they say the same things. They say the things that Nathan said. an assistant superintendent in Missouri who said, "This changed my career. It's life-changing work. It's ridiculously exciting, and we'd love to walk the path with you." So, go to pbscore.com to reach out. Uh or just reach out. You'll find my email. It's Googleable. I'd love to talk with you. I'd love to have you on the podcast. Even if you're just wondering about PBL, wouldn't that be a great conversation? Like, if you're trying to figure out if you're ready, like, let's do that live on the air. Like, let's just have a coaching conversation. That'd be fun. So, pass me on that, too. Give me a call. Uh, let's figure it out. In the meantime, go out, lead inspired.
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