A journey of a thousand miles begins with supplies and resources. You need resources. That first step's important and you've taken it. But you also need resources for your PBL journey. Go to whatispbl.com. That's whatispbl.com to get a free set of resources to get you prepped for your PBL journey. That's whatispbl.com for a free set of resources. Welcome to the PBL Simplified podcast for teachers brought to you by Magnified. Learning, your customized PBL partner. From over a decade of experience with you in the trenches, we are bringing you the top rated educational podcast designed for inspired classroom teachers seeking to transform their classrooms with project-based learning. Live your why, transform your classroom, teach inspired. Here's your host, Ryan Steuer.
That's right. I am your host, Ryan Steuer, and I'm super excited to have you on the PBL Simplified for Teachers podcast. Every episode is specifically designed for you, the classroom teacher. Today we have a guest episode, a PBL showcase if you will, with a high school science teacher. His name is Richard White, and he's awesome. I think you're going to love it. He's a great follow on Twitter. We'll put his social handles in the show notes, so make sure you grab those. Um, but he's doing STEM and engineering, chemistry, in a way that brings joy to the classroom. So, I'm super excited to have him on the podcast today. He is PBL certified. He's been through magnified learning training and he's applying it. You're going to hear how he does that in the this episode. You're going to hear how his ACT scores are going up. You're going to hear about the PBL unit that got him on the news. So, make sure you tune you tune in for that. Now, Richard has been public high school science teacher for the last 17 years. He's taught everything, biology, chemistry, anatomy, physiology, engineering, and he learned early in his career that if he was going to engage high school students, he need he needed to do a lot of hands-on activities, but they hadn't always been organized. He talks about this a little bit in the episode. And what project-based learning did for him is it gave him a process to follow. So those things were a little more organized and he saw engagement go through the roof. Now, everybody wants to be in Mr. White's class and that's such a big deal for the students that he's learning. Now, I want to give you a few of his accolades, if you will. Students are selecting him as the graduation speaker. The school administrators have selected him as district teacher of the year. Missouri State University, selecting him as regional teacher of the year and Missouri Department of Ed made him a candidate for the state teacher of the year for the entire state. He's crushing it. He's humble and he's making real world connections for his learners so they have more opportunities. I hope you enjoy this episode. Hey Richard, thanks for being on the podcast today where every guest gets the very same questions. So tell us what is your why for the work you do?
I've always worked in title one schools here in Missouri. You know, we have a pretty large low socioeconomic population and um what I've gotten good at over the years, not at first, but it took me a while. But what I've gotten good at is taking that population of students and engaging them in science and helping them be successful so that they could pursue STEM careers, which maybe they didn't think they could before, you know. uh getting in my class. So that's what I really like to do is reroute them from just going right into the workforce. Some of them, you know, here in the area that we live in, uh it's a big tourist industry and a lot of them end up in the service industry. So any of them that I can steer from that into a STEM career is a big win for me.
Yeah, that's awesome. And I talked in your bio, you know, you've got uh some things are working in your engineering class, right? Because
you know the Missouri State University selected you as a regional teacher of the year and teacher leader.
Department of Ed had you up as state teacher of the year. So all those
it's working with your kids which is pretty awesome. And I should also say and let our teacher audience know too. You're a good follow on social media. I I love
love following your class. And uh so what are you doing in your class though because you have a popular class now and it's engineering. It's in the STEM field which as teachers are listening they're like nah that can't be right. He can't be that popular, right? But you are. So, what do you do in your classroom just to bring joy to the learning? What's that look like?
Well, you know, um following a lot of the the basic tenants of the magnify learning PBL, you know, giving them a lot of choice and um making it relevant for them. And if I can get community partners, which tends to be the trickier part sometimes, but when I am able to do that, man, it's just that's the home run as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, that's Awesome. And I would also say that, you know, so you're in a high school classroom.
Yes.
Lot of distractions for teens today.
So, but but you guys are doing rigorous learning. Like you aren't teaching fluff standards. You're the work you're doing is tough. Like how are you getting kids to engage right now?
Well, um I have found over the years um that young people and it probably was like this when I was a young person too. They don't like to just sit and be lectured to for a 50-minute period of time. They just it's not their thing. And so what I tend to do is maybe 10 or 15 minutes of that and then we get up and we do something. We we do an activity
and or a project. I'll say, "Okay, we're going to work on our projects now." And that I've just seen the engagement go through the roof.
And before I did the Magnify Learning training, you know, the projects were just kind of sporadic and and hit or miss. But then what Magnify Learning has allowed me to do is to really um organize and focus that. And boy, I really saw the engagement go up, you know, with the the contracts, the group contracts, and having them all pick what part of the project they were going to do, you know, the end product, and giving them some little agency, little voice and choice on on what they wanted to do. Give them a menu to choose from. You know, you want to do this, you want to do this. And I even tell them if if there's something not on the menu in this project that you want to do, um, you know, sell it to me.
Yeah.
And I may say yes, and I have said yes, and I've said no, too, to a few of them.
That's right.
Crazy ideas, you know, but
but just doing that, giving them a menu to choose from and letting them work in groups and um making the projects relevant and and if I can get a community partner, that has really I've just seen the engagement go through the roof. And you know, those accolades you were talking about, those weren't intentional. I was just trying to survive in the classroom and get more engagement out of my students and that was just a byproduct of it really.
Yeah, that's right. And I would say in the social medias I follow, you know, from afar, you know, again, there's joy in the classroom, there's structure and again the periodic tables behind you as we're recording this interview, you know, so there's rigor in the work you're doing. Yes.
Can you walk us through because
you know, state teach you're up for state teacher of the year. You like you say these accolades, but and they're taking notice of your the work that your learners are doing. doing and you've got the structure behind that, right? Like you're walking that out, but you were just in the news, right, with uh
Yes.
with this with the stage and the theater group. Can you walk us through that project a little bit?
Well, we had the theater teacher here at the high school. His name is Derek Cook and he wanted to do the play Anastasia. And um so apparently there's a revolving stage part of that play. And I mean, I wasn't familiar with it before he came to me, but he said, "Do you think your engineering students can build us a stage so we can do this play that I want to do, Anastasia. He says, "I've got a budget, you know, um we'll buy the supplies." And I said, "Well, let me pitch it to them, you know, and see what they say." And so they were on board and we um designed it. I had them design a prototype on some drafting software. And then we had the theater students all come down to my classroom and and the and the engineering students interviewed the theater students to say, "What are you looking for? What are your constraints? Here's our prototype."
And it was really awesome because I just had to stand back and let these teenagers collaborate, you know?
Yeah.
And so anyway, they they came up with a design everybody was happy with and they gave us a budget to go purchase the materials and our students built it and they designed and built it and we had the play um two weeks ago now. Um and it was really awesome. It worked well. It was a chore. It took us a couple of months, you know, because we couldn't work on it every day all day.
Yeah.
Um and it took us a little while to get it to work as well as we wanted it to, but they trouble were able to troubleshoot each issue and come up with an end product that the theater group was happy with and worked well in their play and they want to use it again in another play. So that was really a home run project right there.
It was you could tell there's some good quotes from your from your learners in the the newspaper article as well and they brought up this idea like there was some trial and error in here like things didn't work out you know like
you always wonder like when you're doing math sometimes there's this section like you know that if you got a remainder you probably did the math wrong you know it's like because it's just formulaic and you but you get into these real world problems and it's like hey guys this stage has to rotate correctly it's not going to work you talk about how your students
like they didn't give up obviously right like where does that come into play you mentioned agency but how does that work
well we um as we were building it you know, they were calculating the weight these these stages. It's basically a platform that weighs about 500 pounds that turns on wheels, casters. And so they were calculating the weight that each caster could handle and the weight of the if we had a group of 10 theater students standing on this 500B stage.
And we thought our calculations were all good. Um, they were meeting all the limits. But then when we got it put together and got the weight on it, it wouldn't turn very well. So, Even though the casters didn't break, they were dragging.
Yeah.
All right, back to the drawing board. We had to go bigger basically with bigger casters. And they even calculated the angle that they turned when they bolted these casters down on the webbing for the platform to rotate on.
They calculated at what angle and and actually we built a little prototype stage in in my classroom that they could practice with to see where they would get the least amount of friction and it would turn the best. And they really did a good job with it. I I was impressed.
Yeah, that's super good. They had this real world problem they were going to solve, right? And the community partner was in the within the school, which is fine. Like that makes sense, right? It's a real world problem
that needed to be solved. There were constraints, right? In any real world problem, there are constraints. You don't just get $60,000 to build this thing, right? Like there's
That's right.
There's a budget and there's still a school schedule, right, that you're abiding by.
There was a deadline, right, because the play was already scheduled. Yeah. And we made it. We We were close, but we made the deadline. And then they all got free tickets to the play, you know, from the theater group for doing it. And we went to opening night and watched it work. And it was awesome. Very satisfying to see them actually use it in the play.
Yeah. Well, I think I mean that's something you can put on your resume as a young kid, right? Like you could talk about that. You know, I went to Purdue and then I interviewed with UPS as an, you know, as an young engineering guy, right?
Yeah.
I didn't Honestly, like I never built anything. I never actually designed anything, you know. So, you know, I put some stuff in my resume. I tried to talk about some things, but I didn't have anything like your engineering students have.
I I think it's a big deal. What do you think about that when you think about that step for them? Because you're you mentioned like that's part of your why, right? Like how do we get some of these kids to college?
I think that's a big deal.
These kids um Missouri S&T in RA, Missouri is the the oldest and most prestigious engineering school here that they all aspire to get into.
Okay.
And we've got four seniors that have been accepted to S&T
already.
And so we're excited about that. And then we have uh two more. One's going to Pit State and um the other one is going to Missouri State. But um they all got into their preferred college and we're pretty excited about that.
Yeah. And you know that's something to celebrate and you know I'm all for celebrating the
the football win as well on Friday Night Lights, right? But let's celebrate you know some of these kids going to engineering college. college, right? It's a big deal.
Yes.
That's neat. Can you give us a learner story? Maybe one of your your learners that maybe you didn't expect to do well or, you know, maybe they uh really stepped up.
Yes. I um teach chemistry also and and I do project based in chemistry and um one of my favorite projects to do every year is about um singleuse plastic.
Okay.
That sits in landfills for 500 years. We think you know because we've not had it around for 500 years and then it just breaks down into microlastics and ends up in the ocean and all the waterways. So, I like to teach the students about that and how that's an issue that their generation is going to have to figure out a work around because we can't just keep making petroleum based products, plastics, using them one time and there is no away when you throw it away. It just goes to a landfill and sits there, right?
So, I had them repurpose
um some plastic waste and find another use for it before it actually does go to the landfill. And it's some of the stuff they come up with. It's it's like one of my favorite projects to do. But I had a student that was struggling in school and wasn't coming um at risk of not graduating um and and not passing several of his classes. And when we got to that unit, and I've seen this before, some of these students, they just blossom.
And he built this Skittles dispenser out of plastic. models that was just awesome. I was so impressed with it. I even took it around and showed it to his other teachers. I said, "See, he's a he's a he can do stuff." Yeah.
If you can get motivated, but I've had several instances um the chemistry class I was teaching then was um a mandatory class for their third science credit. So, I had students in there that were collegebound and that were not.
Yeah.
And I could lecture to the collegebound ones, you know, like a normal chemistry class and they would be fine, but the the ones that weren't going to college, I would lose them. You know, they just they weren't into that. So, I found out pretty quickly if I do the projectbased chemistry with them, I catch them all. You know, the collegebound ones and the ones not collegebound. Sure.
And I've more than one occasion I've seen those struggling students that just weren't really buying into school just blossom and flourish in the project-based environment and come up with some of the best projects, you know, of the whole class. Sometimes better than the students that are good at school. You know, you have some students that are just good at school and you have some that aren't.
Yeah.
And the ones that aren't can also um flourish in a project based environment.
Yeah, I like that. That's good. So, Richard, when you look out in into education, there's a lot of different variables. When you look at the larger educational scale, like what are some things that you're optimistic about when you look out there?
I think the students today have so much more choice in their education than we have. that, you know, our our curriculum was pretty much set and and everybody pretty much, unless, you know, you were fortunate enough to go to a private school, we all pretty much took the same classes back in my day. Now, by the time they hit their junior and senior year of high school, at least here where I teach, they can go, we have a te uh um technical center next door to the high school, where they can do marine uh mechanics, automotive mechanics, um auto body, EMT, health tech um and then the engineering program that we have running now. They can go into any of those fields uh or or take those courses, you know, and before they get their high school diploma. And then over here at the high school, we have a lot of dual credit options, you know, where they can get college credit from the local community college. There's just so many choices now for these young people. Almost too many sometimes, I think, because
they're kids. They don't really know what they want to do yet, most of them. So, we're like, well, you know, plan your whole life out. before your junior year is over.
But I I think students today have much more choice than my generation did going through high school.
Yeah, I like that. That makes a lot of sense. So, Richard, let's talk to the teacher who's listening because this podcast right now is just teachers that are listening
and say they're on the say they're on the fence about PBL, whether they should jump in or not. What What would you tell them?
Tell them that my experience with project-based learning was increased engagement in my classes with all students whether they were collegebound or not and increased ACT scores
um we have seen an a uptick in the science ACT uh subtest is the one that I follow.
Sure.
The projectbased does not hinder that. It does. I think some teachers are worried it's going to take too much time. I'm not going to be able to cover all my standards and the the state testing is going going to suffer. I have not experienced that um my experience has been the opposite of that. If you do it in an organized manner, you still can cover all the standards and your state testing. Mine in my case anyway increased, which is one of the reasons I got all those accolades that that you mentioned at the beginning because the district saw that, you know, they saw that
my classes were blowing up, the kids were excited about them and and um our scores were going up and they took notice.
Yeah, that's good. I appreciate that. What? Um, let me give you one last chance for parting advice. Uh, this one's actually for your learners. So, your learners that are in your engineering class that are going to tune into this episode to to hear Mr. White talk, what kind of advice do you have? What kind of advice do you have for them?
Well, gosh, young people, um, I would just tell them, you know, dream big and work hard
and all your doors are open to you right now, you know, and so take advantage of that while you're young and um I think young people and this is tough for them because it was tough for us, but they really need to be purposeful about what classes they're taking in high school to be able to hit their full potential because they have so many choices, right?
There's a lot of students that aren't and just kind of meander and um and we have a lot of kids with student loans out there that they're struggling to pay back and working jobs that they didn't really need the student loans to get. because they weren't as purposeful as I think as they could have been about their career path and getting a marketable degree. So my advice to my students always is, you know, be purposeful, go for a marketing degree. You know, follow your passion, dream big, work hard. That's all good, but make sure you know it's something that's going to be coste effective that you can actually afford to pay for. You know, get all the scholarships you can. So that's my advice to young people.
There you go. Be be purposeful and
Yes.
Right.
And work hard. There you go. Be purposeful and work hard. I like that. That'll fit on a t-shirt. It's awesome.
Yes, sir.
Richard, thanks for thanks for tuning in today. You know, we're we're proud that you're a part of our PBL movement. And again, you're you're a great follow. We'll put your social handles in in the show notes
and and and a link to uh this article on on the stage PBL that you all did. Uh it's awesome. So, really appreciate you being on the podcast today.
All right. Thank you. All right, PBL Simplified audience. We appreciate you tuning in today to hear uh a PBL showcase. You got to hear uh about Richard's engineering class and the joy that's going on there, but also the rigorous and relevant learning that's happening. Right? Test scores are going up and kids are being challenged and that's what you're looking for. You want them to have new opportunities and that's what they're getting with structured real world PBL. So, thanks for tuning in today and we'll see you next time. Until then, go teach inspire.
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