The Student-Centered Shift: Empowered International Schools and Classrooms Through Project-Based Learning

You know that buzz you hear when you walk into a classroom that is completely learner-owned?

That's world renowned Ron Berger's classroom... And his students are ALWAYS working on something meaningful. Whether it's completing a field guide on local amphibians; or drafting plans for a new playground; they behave in the same way professionals would in the REAL WORLD- and they are only 10. 

I sat down with Ron, veteran teacher and senior advisor for EL Education to uncover his secrets for creating this 'ethic of excellence,' and how we can create it in our students as well. We learn:

• The power of public exhibition.
• How to transform static units of study into dynamic 'expeditions' of learning.
• How to build a positive classroom culture of feedback, critique + reflection.
• How to improve work quality without ever awarding a grade.
• To unleash curiosity and wonder in our most reluctant learners.   

Connect with Ron: Twitter @RonBergerEL, Website (eleducation.org), LinkedIN

Get Project Ideas: 'Models of Excellence' from EL Education

PBL Starter Kit: www.transformschool.com/pblstarterkit 

Ron's Bio: 

Ron Berger is Senior Advisor at EL Education, a nonprofit school improvement organization that partners with public schools and districts across America, leads professional learning, and creates open educational resources. He is a well-known keynote speaker nationally and internationally on inspiring a commitment to quality, character and citizenship in students. Ron is the author of best-selling education books, including: An Ethic of Excellence, and A Culture of Quality; and co-author of Leaders of Their Own Learning, Transformational Literacy, Management in the Active Classroom, Learning that Lasts, and We Are Crew: A Teamwork Approach to School Culture.

He also teaches at Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he did his graduate work. He founded the website Models of Excellence: The Center for High-Quality Student Work, which houses the world’s largest collection of beautiful student work. Ron was a member of the U.S. National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development.

In his prior work, Ron was a public school teacher and master carpenter in rural Massachusetts for over 25 years, and received the Autodesk Foundation National Teacher of the Year award.

How do you take the first steps into project-based learning, and  help others across your school take theirs? How do you get the critical 'buy-in' from parents, students, teachers to really help PBL fly?  

I explored these BIG questions with Catriona Woodard, Director of Community Outreach and Partnerships at Bloom Academy in Hong Kong. Through discussing 2 of her projects, Catriona shares how she took her first steps into the PBL pool, and how she is empowering others across the school to take theirs. You will learn how to:

1. Keep your best teaching materials, just look at them in a new way.
2. Make 1-2 simple tweaks to transform teacher-centered units, into learner-centered magic. 
3. Use the power of exhibition to turn the biggest PBL skeptics into believers.
4. Run meaningful project-based experiences and still cover your curriculum. 
5. Help parents, students and other stakeholders become comfortable with the 'organized chaos' that is PBL.

Connect with Catriona: LinkedIn,  

Learn more about Bloom Academy

Get the PBL 'Roadmap': Building Capacity for PBL at Your School

Catriona's Bio: 

Catriona is an educator and school leader who is trying to bridge the gap between creativity and education. Looking at the similarities between how designers approach creative tasks and how learners can approach problems in class and bringing this to the classroom in the every day. She specializes in start-up schools and embraces these opportunities to offer young people a dynamic and fresh educational outlook. Catriona is supporting with the Project Based Learning roll-out in Bloom KKCA Academy, brought the importance of outdoor learning to many HK parents during her leadership at Malven College Pre-School. She's an advocate for creative chaos both in and out of the classroom!

Imagine a classroom full of students who move seamlessly from project task to project task; self-directed, self-managed, and self-empowered... 

While the teacher facilitates seamlessly in the background.

That's what it looks like in veteran teacher Roslynn Jackson's 7th grade 'agile' classroom. In this episode Roslynn uncovers the secrets behind her 'agile' classroom, and how we can develop the mindsets in students to allow for it. Through her 'Gamifying the Weather' and 'Simplifying Science Concepts' Projects, we learn how to:  

• Gently facilitate reflective conversations in project work
• Use positive peer pressure to elevate student work quality
• Lower stress and save time by getting out of our students' way
• Use simple processes to help students direct their own learning  

Connect with Ros: Twitter- @RoslynnJackson, LinkedIn

Resources on building 'Agile Classrooms:' Ros' Website.  Youtube Channel. 

Roslynn's Bio: 

Roslynn (Ros) is an educator with over 17 year of experience teaching. She has taught Kindergarten and 1st Grade, but her passion is for Middle School. She practiced environmental law before transitioning to teaching. Ros is a self-proclaimed "science geek", so teaching middle school science was a perfect fit. She has taught all middle grades (6th-8th grades), but currently teaches 7th Grade Earth and Space Science. She believes that the best part of science is the organized chaos of the inquiry process: asking questions, getting your hands dirty, hypothesizing, experimenting, proving and disproving hypotheses, experimenting again, etc. Through these steps students (and teachers) learn that there is not just THE answer, there is AN answer that could solve a given set of parameters. This is why Ros is a practitioner and advocate for Agile in the classroom. She believes that this framework instills a mindset in teachers and students of collaboration, communication, teamwork, experimentation, and reflection that can help us solve problems while learning content with minimally wasted time. As a Co-Founder of the The Agile Mind, she hopes to help other educators make the transformation to an Agile framework and see the power of becoming a facilitator of student agency and empowerment every day.

What picture comes to mind when you hear the word 'rigour?'

Is it a group of students huddled over their exam papers, solving complex math equations for an end of unit test?

Or is it as the Co-Founder of world renowned PBL school High Tech High Rob Riordan describes it: students engaged for an extended period of time in DEEP, meaningful, real-world work?

In this episode, we unpack and re-imagine rigour through Rob's 8 rules:

Rule #1: No rigour without engagement.

Rule #2: No rigour without ownership. 

Rule #3: No rigour without audiences

Discover the other 5 rules and 'rigourous' process students went through to uncover and share stories of forgotten veterans from the community; build homes for struggling artists; and solve a pesky school rodent problem in a more humane way.   

I promise you will see rigour in a whole new light.

Rob's Bio: 

Rob Riordan is a co-founder of High Tech High in San Diego and President Emeritus of its Graduate School of Education (GSE), the nation’s first to be situated wholly in a K-12 environment. A lifelong educator, he has co-developed 14 new schools spanning the K-12 years, focused on equity, innovation, and community. Through the GSE, he has worked with educators around the world to transform the social relations of schooling by fostering project-based, dialogical approaches to teaching and learning. His work is best described in his chapter, “Schools as Equitable Communities of Inquiry” in Sustainability, Human Well-Being, and the Future of Education (2019).

Connect with Rob: [email protected] 

Get the Book of High Tech High Projects: 'Changing the Subject'

Reference to Rob's 10 Rules: Rules for Rigour

Take the 12 Shifts Scorecard for Learner-Centered Classrooms: 12 Shifts Scorecard

Anyone who works with adolescents, knows middle school can be a challenging time.

But what if we could build a program or school, and project based experiences grounded in best practice that not only made it less challenging, but fun and empowering as well?

This was the question that guided visionaries Andrew Ravin and Denise Daniels in creating Workshop Middle School, an innovative middle school for "creative, curious, and big-hearted students in 6th-8th grade."

Imagine no more bells. Textbooks. Or shuffling to 6 classes a day. Just small cohorts of learners and a trusted mentor to guide them. 

In this short interview, learn from them how to:

• Discover students' interests and passions.
• Develop positive relationships.
• Create authentic assessments.
• Become a mentor, guide and trusted advisor.
• Move from 'lone innovator' in the corner classroom of a large school to small school founder. 

Learn more about Workshop Middle School.  

Peter gave students one simple prompt to unleash the creators, innovators and entrepreneurs in his business studies class: 

"Create a business around a single product or service to help improve your experience at school."  

And then he got out of their way. 

How might you unleash the creators, innovators and entrepreneurs in your classroom? 

In this interview, learn (or unlearn) from 'The Unlearning Coach' how to:

• Frame empowering learning experiences
• Provide a simple roadmap to help students reflect regularly and build their work 
• Transform students into self-managers using one simple tool
• Manage student teams without ever telling them what to do
• Empower your most hard to reach students through real world learning experiences 

Learn more about Peter's Work:

Twitter and Instagram @peterhostrawser

Facebook, LinkedIn,

Website: www.unlearningcoach.com 

Peter's Bio: 

Known as "The Unlearning Coach," Peter Hostrawser has been a business educator in the Chicago area for over 20 years founding the OPRF School of Business at Oak Park and River Forest High School in Oak Park, Illinois. He is an entrepreneur and change agent for traditional educational systems as well as a business coach. Peter has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs start and continue their paths to success. Peter is the host of the Disrupt Education Podcast where creative and non-traditional learners share their stories and thoughts on how to change education. He currently teaches business at Amos Alonzo Stagg High School in Palos Hills, Illinois, USA and is an EdTech consultant. His value is to help others find and show their value.

With the move to hybrid and blended learning environments, collaboration and co-creation can now occur across multiple mediums. Yet many teachers are still designing learning experiences confined to the classroom.

How might we leverage digital tools to co-create deep and meaningful learning experiences that allow learners to collaborate and build anytime, anywhere?

In this interview, 'Miss Betzy,' Innovations and Instructional Coach at Decroly International School teaches us how to:

• Design empowering hybrid learning experiences
• Make the online space more collaborative 
• Provide student voice/choice in what they create, and how they are assessed
• Develop virtual and alternative reality (VR/AR) environments for learners to design in
• Use simple tools for students to evaluate their work
• Make mundane academic content COME TO LIFE! 

Learn more and connect with Betzy on Twitter, and LinkedIn, or get simple free tools via her website: https://geg.gt/. 

Register for Betzy and Kyle's presentation on using Co-Spaces to create collaborative hybrid learning environments! 

Betzy's Bio:

Miss Betsy, as she loves to be called, has enjoyed the wonderful journey in education for about 22 years. She really loves sharing her experiences in teaching and learning with other educators and that is why she is now the High School Innovation teacher and Instructional Coach. She also leads a Google Educator Group, the first one in her country, which gives her the opportunity to share, learn, inspire and empower more educators in Latin America. Betzy discovered how meaningful and transforming PBL can be and has committed to learn more about it and accompany other teachers in creating engaging learning experiences through it. Betzy is also a CoSpaces ambassador and is certain that Virtual Reality is a great complement in PBL. She would love for you to support the #NotGoingBack campaign since she believes that the pandemic and remote learning left valuable lessons and skills that teachers in their classrooms must continue harvesting.

Ever have a student say, 'When will I use this in the REAL WORLD?'

It's their attempt to connect learning in our classrooms to the things that naturally empower and engage them outside of school. Hobbies, interests, sports, work, passion, the community. 

At REAL School Budapest, this curiosity is satisfied daily through real world learning experiences. From designing self guided eco-wonder tours of the community, to creating short docu films on relevant topics, kids are immersed in the real world beyond school.

Hear about the 3 magic ✨  ingredients that allow for these experiences in my short interview with Head of School Dave Strudwick. 

How do we create more learner-centered environments and accelerate innovation in education?

Small learning pods, blended environments, and micro-schools are emerging everywhere to help answer this question. With small class sizes and high level of autonomy, they are able to personalize learning experiences, foster an inclusive community, meet diverse student needs, and chart engaging project-based learning pathways for learners that often get left behind. But are they here to stay? 

I sat down with Tanya Sheckley, 'Rebel Educator' and Founder of innovative micro-school UP Academy to find out. 

Learn more about UP Academy: upacademysf.com. 

Learn more about Tanya's work: tanyasheckley.com. 

Tanya's Bio: 

Tanya Sheckley is Founder and President of UP Academy, an elementary lab school which values innovation, empathy and strength and incorporates a unique neuro-development program for children with physical disabilities. Tanya’s vision and mission show it’s possible to celebrate differences, change what’s broken in the American education system, and that all children can receive a rigorous, well rounded education. She is host of the Rebel Educator podcast, a Social Entrepreneur, Writer, and International Speaker. Tanya earned her BA in Public Heath and Dance and her MBA in Entrepreneurship.

When learning went remote, most teachers put project-based experiences on hold. 

It was just too hard for them to make online learning as hands-on, collaborative, and engaging as it was in the classroom. 

But not Sara Lev, an early childhood expert and master PBL practitioner. 

She had her 4-6 year old students co-creating websites, launching podcasts, and building an online community that fosters WOW and WONDER.

How did she do it? 

In this episode, Sara shares her secrets, and how to:

• Discover student interests through a 5 minute virtual tour- and design projects around them
• Build the same relationships and community online that you do in the classroom
• Get 100% of your kids to show up and turn their cameras on 
• Foster seamless collaboration and group work
• Scaffold experiences to allow all learners to reach success
• Create WOW and WONDER in online learners!

Connect with Sara on Twitter @saramlev.

Join her Early Childhood Facebook Group. 

Sara's Bio: 

Sara Lev is the co-author of the book Implementing Project Based Learning in Early Childhood: Overcoming Misconceptions and Reaching Success (Routledge, 2020) and is a contributing author to the new NCTM book Making Mathematics Come Alive in the Elementary Classroom with Project-Based Learning (edited by Jean S. Lee and Enrique Galindo, 2021). She has been an early childhood teacher in public, private and charter school settings since 2005, and currently teaches Transitional Kindergarten in Los Angeles. Sara received her Master’s Degree in Early Childhood Education from Bank Street College in New York City, and is a member of the National Faculty of PBLWorks where she facilitates Project Based Learning workshops for PreK-12 educators. She is also a Yoga Ed. trainer where she leads workshops for educators in how to use Yoga and mindfulness tools in a variety of learning environments. Sara enjoys working with educators both nationally and internationally, supporting teachers and school leaders in implementing learner-centered practices and approaches into all classroom settings. She brings her passion for young children to every teaching, learning, coaching, and consulting opportunity.