Ryan Steuer: Welcome back to PBL Simplified for Teachers, a podcast specifically for you, the classroom teacher, bringing project-based learning to your learners. Today, we're going to be talking about why is PBL good for kids. And you might already be in the boat rowing the same way. But I think it always helps to kind of stir up and have new new reasons for your why of doing PBL. And PBL is not always the easiest instructional model, it’s just the most effective. And you, you love it or you're trying to figure out if you love it or not. So today's episode is really going to be about why PBL is good for kids, and I'm going to give you three core areas where I think PBL excels as an instructional model. Before we do that, did you know that we have a YouTube series specifically for teachers as well? If you go to pblsimplified.com, pblsimplified.com, there is a YouTube series specifically for you, the classroom teachers. So, if you're looking to level up your PBL game, if you need some short engaging videos for PD or to share with your other teachers, or maybe you want to learn through proven stories, experiences, and expertise, these videos walk you through a lot of the core need-to-knows that we've gotten over our workshops over the last decade. So go to pblsimplified.com to check out that YouTube series. When we look at why PBL is good for kids, I think there are three key areas that every teacher is focused on specifically right now. These are things that continually come up in our workshops and need to knows is things that you're, I don't want to say concerned about, worried about, but it's things that you're focusing on because you know it's good for kids, and that's ultimately our goal. We've got to remember that, right? Because there's a lot of things out there that don't seem to be centered on kids or other things to worry about. So that's what we're talking about today, why is PBL good for kids? The very first key area is academic benefits, right? You're teaching content, you want your learners to know it so they can excel in the workforce or in college, whatever their next step is so that they can have the life that they want to have, new opportunities, you want to see those light bulb moments go off, right? You have your why, and part of that is academics. So what does it look like when you bring PBL to a school? If it's a Title 1 elementary school, I've kind of been saying it's a no-brainer at this point to bring PBL in, and our model schools like Dixie Elementary, uh, they were a D school according to the state testing and 2 years later they were an A. They used project-based learning to get there. They trained their teachers, their students were on board, the community, the parents all got on board, and they made a huge shift in just 2 years. That's a big deal. Southport Elementary, another one of our model schools, Title 1 school, they were actually already an A. They were actually doing really well with their standardized state test scores, uh, and they wanted to bring PBL in to bring the employability skills and the authenticity of the work to their kids so they had these new opportunities, but they also didn't want their scores to dip, and they didn't, they had the highest growth in the state. That's a big deal. And that's growth numbers, so that's like their learners that were excelling at, at the standardized test excelled even more. Those learners that might have been struggling, they came up as well. So the highest in growth. So we see those numbers growing. What's it look like at the secondary level? Um, sometimes the equation's a little trickier there. So if you know, in middle school like you get that, um, we had a school within a school in a large comprehensive high school, there were 1,000 kids in 7th and 8th grade, and we took 25% of the kids and gave them PBL. With those 25% of the kids in a failing school, they would have been a B if you took out their, their scores, just looked at the kids doing PBL. They all, their attendance was a percent and a half higher, and with 25% of the kids they had 8% of the discipline. So kids showed up to school on time and generally did what they were supposed to do. And therefore, their state test score went up because they learned more, right? They were more engaged, they got it, they understood their why. And yes, those kids were demographically balanced, it was a stratified lottery, so those 25% of the kids look just like the rest of the school. So the academic benefits are there. There are larger research studies, and we'll put them in the show notes. Uh, the Lucas Education Foundation did, uh, a large randomized study in 2021 and they saw some pretty amazing results with project-based learning. In AP courses, in your higher-level courses in high school, we see that there's an 8% point increase in students earning a score of 3 or higher on those AP exams after just 1 year. So after just 1 year of PBL. And I know in AP courses a lot of times we hear, well, there's no room for me to bring PBL in. Well, I understand that idea, but it, it at some point I think it might be a misunderstanding of what PBL is, right? So PBL is this instructional model that you're bringing in, it's not an extra add-on that you're bringing in. And our AP teachers in our model schools they, they would say, I don't think I would teach an AP course without project-based learning because that's how my learners grasp this knowledge so that when they get to the test they can crush it. And in that same research study they actually said they estimated that the rise would be 10% points if they had 2 years of PBL. So it's a big deal. And that's, that's your secondary version, even in AP courses. At the elementary level, we see significant gains in SEAL, which we're going to talk about next. A little bit of a spoiler alert. So those skills, including self-reflection, collaboration, they went through the roof. And then so social studies and literacy was the other place where they, they kind of couched their study. They saw a 63% gain in social studies learning, that those content standards, a 63% gain compared to traditional courses doing the same thing, a 23% gain in informational reading, weigh to an additional 5 to 6 months or 2 months of learning respectively. So that comes right out of that, that study. At the middle school level, they also outperformed their peers in science in their core subject areas that they were tracking in those language proficiency tests for the ELLL learners, there's a huge difference compared to traditional settings. So the research is there too. We see it in our model schools. And when you look at the academic benefits of PBL, they're undeniable at this point. Now could you be doing, could you maybe see some, some poor practices of PBL out there? I think you could, right? Like if you grabbed PBL, you didn't do any training, you got a Teachers Pay Teachers PBL unit, or you heard somebody did a PBL unit, so you did it, I could see that it, it might not work. But if you're looking, and this is actually in this study, that the study actually showed that you have to have some professional development, rigorous 3-plus days of, of project-based learning professional development to get these results. So it's not something you really dabble into. You could, and it doesn't mean you can't ooch and try some things out. But once you say, "Yes, I get it, I've got a taste for this, I want more," you need to get some training and support, which is what we've dedicated our lives to, uh, because we see the benefits, right? They're there academically. Now there are a lot of other benefits to PBL, but academics is kind of the core of what we do in school, right? So we've got to make sure that those things are there. The next key that I know you're working on is social, social-emotional learning, your SEAL, and we tend to lean on CASTLE resources for that. Um, you likely do too, but you can always do a Google Search of, of CASTLE SEAL and four pillars, and you'll see there are five pillars, uh, self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-m. And if you look at those five, and then you put PBL, uh, next to those, you can see that PBL is the vehicle to bring you to those five pillars. How do you get to those five pillars without some kind of a vehicle like PBL? You're teaching things like outside of the context that they need to be in. So you're telling kids that they should be self-aware and they're looking at their interests and their strengths, but it's not within any kind of a group setting or a real-world project that's happening. So it becomes this kind of ambiguous, uh, idea that they're not connecting it to. So when we do whenever, whenever you learn, right? The basics of learning is that there's something you know, and you connect the unknown to these things that you know. And this is where PBL really excels because PBL encourages students to take ownership of their learning by making different choices throughout their PBL unit. So we love voice and choice, and, but what happens is this autonomy helps your students start to identify their interests and their strengths and it enhances that self-awareness that SEAL pillar that we're really shooting for. When you look at self-management, right? Anytime you're engaging your learners in inquiry-based PBL, uh, it requires your students to start setting goals, to manage their time, persist through challenges, and it starts to strengthen their self-management skills. And what I love about PBL if you can really get into like my book, PBL Simplified, I've got a chapter on grading, and you're grading yes your content, your academic growth, like we talked about in the first section, but you're also grading collaboration and presentation skills, and agency. You're grading self-management, right? That's our term. You're grading that self-management. If you're going to grade it, you have to teach it. So now we're teaching our kids how to set goals and manage time and persist through challenges in the context of a real-world problem-solving scenario, sorry, not scenario, but a real-world problem-solving, um, life skill, if you will, right? So they're in this PBL unit trying to solve this real-world problem, and now they're like, "Yes, I do need to set goals. Yes, I do need to manage my time or I'm not going to hit my deadline for my presentation where I'm going to be talking to Mike from the Hemophilia Society, and I want to make sure I get that done." So, again, the SEAL is now in context of something that your kids care about. It makes a big, big difference. The third is social awareness. And when you take that social awareness, and you connect it again to a real-world connection, something happens, right? It's different than a scenario, it's different than a YouTube video, they're now solving some kind of a real-world problem or issue, and it starts to foster empathy, you get this deeper understanding of diverse perspectives, people that are not like you or me, right? What does this look like? And that's where you start to get social awareness, you start to look outside of your school, outside of your set of friends, and you're getting your learners to look just a little bit farther with an eye of empathy. But you need that real-world connection to make it more authentic. Otherwise, we're going to say, "Hey, pretend that this thing is happening, how would you feel?" And there's some value to that for sure, but what if that was a workshop within a larger PBL unit? You, you double down on that value. The fourth is relationship skills. How do we get our learners to grow relationship skills when they're often on their phone and social media, they're texting, they've got these keyboard muscles, so they can say all kinds of things they would never say in real life? Well, we get them to actually collaborate, right? Like in real life, they, we get them working in groups, they have group contracts, they have terms and norms and agreements that they have to live by, and they start to learn how relationships actually work, they're going to actually resolve conflicts, they're going to communicate clearly, they don't get to just be mean and then walk off. It's, or if someone hurts your feelings, you don't just take it and bottle it up, we actually talk about it. So now we're teaching relationship skills specifically, and your learners get to practice them, what an awesome environment. All right, one more, uh, responsible decision-making is the fifth pillar that CASTLE uses for their SEAL, and PBL starts to incorporate reflection and feedback. And when you're reflecting on the decisions you've made, and you're given feedback by others on the decisions that you've made, the things you've created, the way you've presented, you're starting to look at your decision-m, maybe I shouldn't have picked a group with all my friends, maybe I should have picked a group with people that had different personalities than me, right? And they start to look at, again, if you go, it's all a little bit circular, right? Because you're starting to become self-aware, you're starting to make responsible decisions, which I would say might be one of the biggest outcomes we want for our learners, right? Once they leave college and get into the workforce, we want them to make good decisions. And we get to do that in a safe environment in our K-12 environment where, and even in college where we have a facilitator that's guiding these ideas. So PBL incorporates reflection and feedback, which prompts your students to evaluate their decisions, and now we're bringing about responsible decision-making, again, one of those SEAL pillars. So we, we really see at Magnify Learning, we see PBL as this vehicle that can bring about in your classroom. We all want to have a psychologically safe environment where teams can thrive, your learners can figure out who they are and they can grow. academically to do that. I mean, PBL is that instructional model that brings in these other ideas. The third key area that I'm just really sure you want your learners to have and you want them to experience is PBL helps them be future-ready. Future-ready, what does future-ready mean? It's like, I don't know, but because the future's so unknown, we've got AI, we've got changing industries, we've got changing political environments, what our jobs are going to look like, are there going to be jobs in this sector or that sector, which ones will be eliminated? It's hard to tell. But what we know is that every single time we ask our industry partners what do they want from our learners, they talk about critical thinking, problem-solving, collaborate, collaboration or teamwork, uh, self-management, all these PBL skills come up in any top 10 list. If you look at it with a PBL eye, you can just check-mark them, they're always there because those are the skills that are always going to be needed, right? We used to call them 21st-century skills. You still can, right? Critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, we thought everything had to start with a C so you could remember it. And it's like, what about problem-solving? Well, that still works, right? Those are the skills that our kids need. The other thing that makes our kids future-ready in project-based learning is they get to see other careers that are out there. The career exploration piece is a big deal because they have opportunities to engage with professionals. They get to explore real-world problems, you know, they might get to interact with somebody who analyzes DNA for the state police. It's like, "Well, I didn't even know that was a position, how do you do that?" And maybe they're super intrigued, and they go down that field. Maybe they find out they don't like the Punnett square at all. So they go a completely different direction like, "Well, I really liked it when we did finance and the banker came in, I want to be a banker and help local people get loans to start their businesses. I want to be a pharmacist," or I don't want to be a pharmacist, right? I had one learner that, she went to go be a pharmacist, that's a lot of schooling, she paid for a lot of schooling, and went to school for a real long time, and found out she did not like being a pharmacist. Like you're pretty pot-committed at that point. So that's a rough go because you're kind of guessing, right? Like, I think I would like to be a pharmacist, well it turns out at the end of the day it might be different than what you think. So when they get to talk to people, especially in these STEM fields, we know that there's research that shows that it changes the way they see, see those opportunities and they can see themselves in seats. So those are three key areas that I think every teacher is focused on right now when you look at PBL. You're asking about the academic benefits, the research is there. You're asking about SEAL, you're trying to get there right in a lot of different ways, and I think PBL is that vehicle. And then we want our kids to be future-ready, you know, a little bit of like, whatever that means, but we know that there are some core skills that they really need to work on that are not typically in your content standards, right? So we want to use your content standards to get to some of these future-ready skills as well. So where do you start as a teacher? You know, I think you can start small, right? You can choose a topic or a standard and start exploring PBL, right? Grab a book. Go to the PBLsimplified.com series I talked about at the beginning of this episode, you can go through the YouTube series, you know, the PBL Simplified book. It's usually like 12 bucks on Amazon, right? And we went through, I think it was the seventh-largest publisher, so we don't really get to control that price, but I love where it's at, like grab it. There's a ton of great stuff in there. There's a win, there's a fail, a place to start with every PBL idea. It's such a great place to start, and there's a free book study that goes along with it, you can get on our website. So you can start small, you can start with a small group, you can start by bringing inquiry into your classroom. Where can you create some curiosity in your classroom? Do a need-to-know list, right? Have some driving questions as you work your way into PBL. And as you do those things, like, celebrate what works, like really celebrate those wins with your learners and with your team because it's a big deal, right? When you're, when you're bringing PBL into your classroom, it really is a game-changer for you as the educator and for your learners as well because again, you're going to see academics go up. You're going to see their skills really strengthen, so just as a person they become a stronger person, and then they become future-ready. So whatever it is that's coming next, they can be ready for it. Speaking of what's coming next, the next episode we have a guest episode. We're going to bring on Josh Geel. He was a PBL teacher in, in the classroom, and now he's a PBL principal at that same school. And what I asked Josh to do, he's been on the podcast before, but I asked him to come in and talk about teacher evaluations in a PBL environment. Do you have some questions around evaluations in PBL? I just suspect that you do because every time we do a workshop, it comes up. So I brought Josh on and just said, "Hey, as a principal, what are the things you're looking for? What should teachers be doing so that you can get an idea of how those evaluations kind of affect your classroom as you're bringing PBL in?" I think you're going to really appreciate the episode, so subscribe to the channel. You know, this PBL Simplified for teachers specifically for you, and it'll pop up as a new episode so that you can watch it. And we'll see you then. Until then, teach inspired. 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