Are you planning to launch your very first project-based experience in the 2022-2023 school year?

That can be exciting and terrifying all at the same time. 

This episode provides insights and tips from teaching team Michelle Willis and Dave Sheenan who launched their first project in the 2021-2022 school year.

Through the re-telling of their 'Suenos Unidos' (Dreamers Unite) project, they teach us how to:

1. Take an existing unit and turn it into a project-based experience
2. Become comfortable in the 'messiness' of PBL
3. Be pleasanty suprised by our students
4. Have previously disengaged students work harder for their classmates than they ever worked for us
5. Discover strengths we never knew our students had 

View the 'Suenos Unidos' Project Site: https://sites.google.com/gomperscharter.org/pbl/home 

Get the PBL Design Certificate Course for 40% off: https://projectbasedlearning.teachable.com/p/projectbasedlearning1?coupon_code=FALL-SALE

Connect with Michelle on Instagram: @lilswills

Michelle and Dave's Bios: Ms.Willis currently works at Gompers Preparatory Academy, she is going into her 10th year as an 11th grade English teacher. She is a strong believer in briding the equity gap in education by supporting ALL learners and learning styles. She is also a mom, a coach, a corny joke teller, comedy lover and overall nerd. She can be found listening music, working out or working on her writing skills. But you’ll most likely find her goofing around with her two year old son or contemplating the contradictions of modern day life. Mr. Sheehan has worked at Gompers Preparatory Academy for the past ten years as a high school Special Education teacher. A former teacher of the year, Mr. Sheehan believes all students, regardless of their disabilities, have the capabilities to learn and grow. When he's not focused on his job, you can find him hanging out with friends and taking care of his family: his nephew, Ry, his cat, Stella, and his dog, Trinity.

What happens when we provide time for students to pursue their passions, and connect them to a deeper purpose through projects they design?  This was the big question behind the Capstone Program at Hawaii Prep Academy; a learner-centered initiative that affords students 3 hours a week during their their 5th, 8th and 12th grade years to develop projects that are meaningful to them.  One 8th grade learner used the time to start the school's first LGBTQ+ club; while another used it to co-design reforestation projects with a local NGO.  I sat down with Dagan Bernstein, the program coordinator to learn more about the program, and how we as edu-transformers can:

• Help our students discover their passions and connect them to a greater purpose
• Scaffold and support the project process by using the 6 'P's' 
• Shift from Teacher to Project Mentor by adopting a growth mindset
• Start a similar initiative in our classrooms or schools

Dagan's Website: dagan.education

Dagan's Blog: dagan.blog

Connect with Dagan on Twitter (@DaganBernstein) and LinkedIn (@DaganBernstein)

Dagan's Bio: Dagan currently works as the K-8 Capstone Coordinator at Hawai’i Preparatory Academy in Waimea on Hawai’i Island with additional experience in music, digital media, and mathematics instruction. A strong believer in developing student agency and supporting skills for a “future curriculum”, he is an advocate for using design, futures, and music thinking to support productive collaboration among educators. Dagan is also a musician who loves writing, recording, and performing at farmer’s markets and coffee shops throughout Hawai’i Island.

What do you think of when you hear the term 'learner agency?' You might envisage students having some "voice" and "choice" around what they learn, or where they sit in class.  And while that's a nice start, learner agency is more than allowing students some choice in what they learn. It's about involving them in every step of the journey. Imagine a school with... 🙌🏼 Student- run electives. 🙌🏼 Seventy + student led businesses to carry out the school's day to day operations. 🙌🏼 Timetables that are created and carried out by a student design team. 🙌🏼 A school board that includes young learners. 🙌🏼 100+ Individualised Learning Plans that students co-design. That's Templestowe College, or more affectionately known as "Take Control" College in Australia. It's one of Hundred.org's top 100 most innovative schools in the world. And Peter Hutton was the mastermind at its helm.  I was lucky enough to sit down with Peter to learn more about how he built this kind of learner agency; and how we as learner-centered champions can heed the lessons to build more student agency in our classrooms and schools.

Connect with Peter: LinkedIn, Twitter

Join Future Schools: https://futureschools.education/

Take the 12 Shifts for Learner-Centered Classrooms Scorecard: www.transformschool.com/12shiftsmastermind

Peter's Bio: Peter is a maverick, a free radical, a challenger of the status quo. His strength is in transformational insight and supporting educational leaders to build innovative and adaptive cultures. As a person with dyslexia, Peter sees the world differently. Co-founding the Future Schools Alliance in 2018, Peter now works with a community of 100 member schools to significantly improve the lives of young people by transforming the education system to promote purpose-filled empowered learning and equip them for times of exponential change. Peter was the former Principal of Templestowe College which has been recognised by Finland’s HundrED organisationas one of the most innovative schools in the world.

Good projects aren't that tough to create. 

But somehow we always seem to overcomplicate them. (Me included)

What if I told you that the best project prompts could fit on a single post-it note? 

Project-Based experiences that have students staying in during lunch, working late hours in the evening, mastering curricular standards, and producing awe inspiring work that makes adult jaws drop. 

These are the kind of project-based experiences Gary Stager has educators around the world designing through his Summer Institutes and brilliant book 'Invent to Learn' on a regular basis. 

I sat down with Gary to discuss the book and how we as learning experience designers can: 

• Design curricular rich project prompts that fit on a single post-it note
• Create learning environments that resemble more cocktail party than they do classroom
• Design projects that are 'sharable,' and live on well beyond their expiration date
• Release the shackles of subjects, specialists, timetables, curriculum standards and assessment that often stand in the way of deep and meaningful learning 
• Act more as 'ethnographers' to capture and document student learning, rather than teachers who deliver instruction  

Get Gary's Book 'Invent to Learn': https://inventtolearn.com/

Learn more about Gary: http://professorgarystager.com

Connect with Gary on Twitter: @garystager

Get the Free PBL Design Starter Kit: https://transformschool.com/pblstarterkit/ 

Gary's Bio:

In addition to being a popular keynote speaker at some of the world’s most prestigious education conferences, Gary Stager is a journalist, teacher educator, consultant, professor, software developer, publisher, and school administrator. An elementary teacher by training, he has taught students from preschool through doctoral studies. In 1990, Dr. Stager led professional development in the world’s first laptop schools and played a major role in the early days of online education. Gary is the founder of the Constructing Modern Knowledge summer institute for educators. Dr. Stager is co-author of Invent To Learn – Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom, called the “bible of the maker movement in schools,” by Larry Magid of CBS and The San Jose Mercury News. Invent To Learn has been translated into nine languages. Dr. Stager’s most recent book is Twenty Things to Do with a Computer Forward 50: Future Visions of Education Inspired by Seymour Papert and Cynthia Solomon’s Seminal Work. When Jean Piaget wanted to better understand how children learn mathematics, he hired Seymour Papert. When Dr. Papert wanted to create a high-tech alternative learning environment for incarcerated at-risk teens, he hired Gary Stager. This work was the basis for Gary’s doctoral dissertation and documented Papert’s most-recent institutional research project. Dr. Stager’s work has earned a Ph.D. in Science and Mathematics Education and he collaborated on a project that won a Grammy Award. Recently, Gary was invited by Fondazione Reggio Children to lead a public seminar on education in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Gary is also on the advisory board of the NSF-funded project, BJC4NYC: Bringing a Rigorous Computer Science Principles Course to the Largest School System in the US. Dr. Stager also maintains the world’s largest archive of text and multimedia by Seymour Papert at The Daily Papert.

How do we build 'future ready' students? Answering this question requires us to change a lot of the underlying structures that govern schools. 

Schedules. Curriculum. Learning Experiences. Age groupings. 

What if you could start from scratch and build from the ground up?

That's exactly what Cameron Fox, Head of School at Verso International School did to build future ready 'citizen designers.'

In this episode, Cameron unveils the 🪄 magic and teaches us how to: 

• Craft a simple, yet aspirational vision for learning experiences
• Co-design spaces that allow for them to flourish
• Ditch the traditional timetable in favor of longer learning blocks that allow for deeper learning and human-centered design 
• Build 'future ready' skills in students
• Transform your classroom/school into a public exhibition space for their work

Connect wtih Cameron: LinkedIn, Twitter (@HeadVERSO)

Learn more about Verso: http://www.verso.ac.th/

Enroll in the Free Edu-Transformer Book Study: https://forms.gle/crK4r8DHk6MZ7Twy7

Cameron's Bio: Cameron is currently the Founding Head of School at VERSO International School, Thailand - the first international school in the world to develop its conceptual blueprint in partnership with the world’s leading design and innovation company, IDEO. Cameron has been involved with this pioneering school project since its inception in 2015, leading a team of international learning designers as they re-engineer a traditional US college-prep curriculum into a progressive, competency-based program using project-based learning and human-centered design practices. Originally from Scotland, Cameron spent 26 years working as an educator and international school leader in Hong Kong before moving to Bangkok in 2019. He was the Head of School at the American International School in Hong Kong for more than 15 years and is an experienced WASC Chair who regularly leads visiting committees to international schools across the EARCOS region. 

How do you make student work public? 

That's a scary proposition for many of us as educators.

But what if it's not for us to decide? 

What if we turned over control of the whole process to our students? 

Letting them choose the work, the medium, the format, the audience, and the script. What would happen then?

In this episode, I sit down with MYP Coordinator and student empowerer Alison Yang to learn more about how to curate public exhibitions, and how to:

• Exhibit student work seamlessly in in-person AND remote environments 
• Help typically shy students come to life
• Empower students to own the process while we gently guide in the background
• Get kids excited to share their learning
• Manage the project process using tech tools so easy, a caveman could do it

Alison's Blog: www.alisonyang.com 

Alison's Post on Creating an Exhibition in GatherTown: https://alisonyang.com/8-steps-to-organize-a-virtual-exhibition-via-gather-town/#Conclusion

Connect w/ Alison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisonyawenyang/

Alison's Bio:

Alison Yang is an MYP Coordinator at KIS International School, Bangkok Thailand. Additionally, she is also an MYP/DP Workshop Leader and Field Rep, BQC Reviewer, Mandarin ab initio Examiner and MYP Language Acquisition Teacher Support Material Contributor. This is her 18th year working in the IB programmes. She is an active IB Educator and has been actively involved in IB activities and presented in various conferences. She deeply believes that evidence and research-based educational approaches can enhance educational practices and maximize student learning. She is interested in developing self-regulation of students.

Are you the lone innovator in a school that doesn't get project-based learning? How do get more on baord for PBL and scale it across the school?  David Moore, a school leader, PBL practitioner and vintage car enthusiast got an entire community behind project-based experiences by converting his school's car park into a Formula 1 Race Track. 

Learn about the incredible and inspiring story of Faith Lutheran College, and how David transformed it from a place with declining enrollment, to one of the most sought after schools in the region. Learn how to:

• Turn skeptical parents into your biggest believers.
• Stay competitive with schools who have infinitely more money and resources. 
• Help 100% of staff feel ready for their first PBL experience through a 10 minute activity.
• Use the power of exhibition to accelerate onboarding for PBL.
• Transform archaic, siloed subjects, into real world, mixed-age courses. 

Connect with David: LinkedIN

Learn more about Faith Lutheran College: www.faithlutheran.qld.edu.au 

Take the 12 Shifts for Learner-Centered Environments Scorecard: www.tranformschool.com/12shiftsmastermind

David's Bio: David Moore, Deputy Head of Secondary School - Learning. He has been teaching for the past 35 years in both the Public and private schools systems in Queensland, Australia. For the past 20 years he has been at Faith Lutheran College Redlands where he was a foundation teacher, moving through the curriculum pathways to the position where he is today. He is passionate about curriculum and learning being done differently so that students enjoy learning. The learning program designed at Faith creates courses based on a student's ability not their age with Soloed subjects combined in a PBL environment.

How can one project unite previously isolated teachers, build SEL and cross-disciplinary skills in students, and transform a community? 

Welcome to the Sensory Therapy Games and Toys Project by the Year 5 Team at KPIS International School.

In this episode, I unpack the project with the 5 person teaching team to discover:

• The starting point for cross-disciplinary learning design 
• How to seamlessly integrate content across a range of subjects
• Build SEL skills 
• Assess student learning
• Foster greater collaboration amongst teachers and students

Learn more about KPIS International School: https://kpis.ac.th/ 

Learn more about the upcoming PBL Design Certificate Course and enroll a team: https://transformschool.com/pbl-intermediate-blended-learning-immersive-coaching/ 

When a girl from Cuba arrived in Lua's PBL class, she had zero English. 

But within two months, because of a hands-on project, she was able to deliver full presentations in her second language.

In this episode, I sit down with Lua Yaganagi and her adorable students, in a mixed-age primary PBL classroom in Rizhao, China to hear how projects ranging from building a class garden, to designing Olympic Games helped students:

• Acquire reading, writing and listening ESL skills. 
• Grow in confidence. 
• Co-teach their younger peers.
• Discover their personal passions. 
• Improve their English speaking vocabulary.

For a full write up of Lua's Class Garden Project: https://bit.ly/3KGtgan

Get the free PBL Design Kit: https://projectbasedlearning.teachable.com/p/pblstarterkit 

That's the power of PBL when learners are given an authentic problem to tackle.

In this episode, Christopher Bush, Head of Student Voice and Leadership at University HIgh School, unpacks the First Nations Project and provides ideas for how we as learner-centered practitioners can: 

• Co-Create projects with students and experts in the community 
• Break down the walls between school and community and find authentic problems to design projects around
• Help foster learner agency and voice in managing their own projects under the same driving question
• Scaffold experiences to allow for DEEP learning

Register for the 12 Shifts Webinar to unpack Learner-Centered PBL Environments: Here 

Chris' Bio:

Chris Bush is currently the Head of Student Voice and Leadership at the University High School in Parkville. Previously working as a Leading Teacher (Curriculum and Innovation) at Prahran High School, Chris designed and implemented an agentic and engaging project-based learning curriculum focussing on various topics including Indigenous Perspectives, Sustainability, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Prior to this work, Chris worked for the Safe Schools Coalition Australia, where he designed and implemented National curriculum resources to make schools safer for LGBTQIA+ students. Chris is passionate about co-designing engaging learning experiences with his learners and listening authentically to their desires and interests, allowing those to drive their inquiries.