Student engagement is the key to transforming our classrooms and our schools. When we do not engage students in learning, they find other ways to engage themselves. When you look at classrooms, you often have students that look engaged: they complete their work, perform well on assessments, and don't cause issues for the teachers. However, in many cases, they have just figured out how to play school and they fit the mold of a model student. They know the routine. The teacher introduces the lesson, take notes, complete questions, study the unit guide, take the assessment, maybe complete some homework along the way and then move on and repeat. I have seen the file folders of teachers where the unit is planned one time and taught over and over. The same books are read year after year and the same worksheets are pulled out and completed each year. This style of teaching is driven by the feeling that we have to cover standards. It is compounded by the number of standards that we have to cover each year. Joe Sanfelippo has a great clip from a discussion regarding things we should "unlearn". We don't need the traditional system any longer.
We need to transform our schools and our classrooms in order to engage our students. Recently began reading Project-Based Learning Anywhere: Live It, Learn It, Love It! by Dr. Lori Elliott and it has really simplified the idea of student engagement and learning. PBL is not a place or thing (See the graphic below based on Dr. Elliott's book). It is the thing. Dr. Elliott has a quote in her book:
"It would be tough for students to live in a worksheet world and do just 1 or 2 PBL units a year."
The big issue for most when it comes to increasing PBL is the idea that PBL does not cover standards. The issue is that we often take our personal favorite concept and we try to cram standards into it when the process of developing a PBL should start with the standards. See the graphic below that is outlined in Dr. Elliott's book. The standards and the essential questions are the foundation of the PBL. When you begin with the standards first, you are able to cover the curriculum plus provide authentic learning and increase authentic engagement through student voice and choice.
Voice and choice are also a downfall or hurdle. As teachers, we are comfortable when we have this roadmap to our lesson. With voice and choice, the students create the roadmap for their learning. They do the research and create the finished project that is often undefined. That takes us out of our comfort level and often leads to the worry of if students learned. We have to get over this hurdle and understand that we transform from a lecturer to a facilitator. We don't have to be the expert in regards to the topic of the PBL, we have to be the experts on the standards and guide the learning through our questioning. We can still guide students through the standards. Instead of reviewing the standards and practicing problems or learning content, we are applying the standards and skills. If we get out of our own way and allow students to select the content and weave the standards into it, we not only engage students but also reduce the work effort as a teacher. I don't have to have a script for every minute of the day. Allow the kids to create the scripts.
We can still have ongoing assessments embedded into the PBL. We can have students journal or complete exit tickets in order to gauge understanding the covered standards along the way rather than waiting until the end. If in the middle of a PBL, you see students struggling with a standard, THEN take some time to direct teach and intervene and guide your kids back on the right path to mastering the standards. The difference is we are teaching kids and letting them guide us rather than teaching standards and letting them control us. Your kids will tell you where they need to go (Elliott, 2020).
Here is the key though, you are intervening for standards, NOT PBL. We are allowed to make mistakes so why are our kids not allowed? Think of a team working on a problem in an office somewhere. They analyze the issue, make changes and sometimes the changes work and sometime they do not. Yet, the team learns and makes additional adjustments and continues to improve. Too many of our kids do not know how to persevere. Our top students typically understand and grasp concepts easily and perform well on assessments; however, when challenged many cannot grasp not excelling immediately. Allow students time to critique and reflect, make adjustments and learn from failure. While you may need to put on your cheerleader hat to keep students motivated through their failures, we can still have amazing learning with failure. Maybe, the next project is done differently due to the failures just like we do in real life.
Dr. Elliott got it right. The worksheet world is painful. We have to change this and it will take a paradigm shift away from schools being driven by standards. Schools need to be driven by kids...who happen to learn a few standards. We teach kids the standards. We don't teach standards to kids. We can do this. All it takes is for adults to get out of their own way and do a PBL of the learning process in their classroom, their school, or district. Learn what works and what does not. Your kids will tell you.
Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings. Let's connect and give me a follow on twitter @PrincipalCMill. Look for my podcast, "The Principal and the Kid" hosted by myself and my local expert on student engagement, my 11-year old son to be rolling out soon or when he thinks it is cool enough.
Elliott, L. (2020). Project-based learning anywhere: Live it, learn it, love it!
Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc.
