What would happen to learning if you collapsed the timetable, paired teachers, and co-designed community and passion driven projects? This is what American International School does for one week each year with its “PBL intensives.” It is now in iteration 3.0.

The results have been incredible…

Teachers have re-configured their classrooms to be more learner-centered. Built partnerships for learning experiences with the community to make them more authentic. Invited student voice and agency to ensure learning meets their needs. In short, it’s transformed the culture around teaching and learning.

Zachary Post, the Middle School Principal was at the helm of these PBL intensives. I sat down with Zach to learn a bit more about them, and how we can use a week off the timetable to accelerate, onboard, and ‘power up’ PBL on our own campuses as well.

Do you remember the projects you completed as a kid? 

I remember mine well.

As a 3rd grader, after learning about the universe I built a mobile model of the solar system. I used foam balls and paint to construct each planet. As a 6th grader, after learning about Medieval Europe, I built a castle out of sugar cubes. I remember vividly using toothpicks and nylon string to build the drawbridge. As a 7th grader, after learning about the scientific process, I ran a science experiment on how polymers affect plant growth. I remember displaying my findings on a cardboard trifold beside a hundred other peers inside of a huge auditorium.

I also vividly remember what I did after every exhibition.

After each showcase of my learning, I promptly disposed of my projects in a large dumpster outside the back of school. Apparently I wasn’t the only one. Pieces of old projects; bent cardboard, foam and used popsicle sticks leaked out of the sides.

Do you have similar memories?

‘Doing Projects’ vs. Project-Based Learning (PBL)

The problem with these kinds of projects, is not that they aren’t fun or memorable–they certainly beat learning from a textbook–but rather, it’s that they hardly resemble the way projects work in the real world.

In the real world, projects don’t start once the learning is complete, they are what drives the learning in the first place.

My brother, a computer programmer, learns to write code based on new software he needs to develop. My good friend, a music producer, learns to overlay new beats based on the album he hopes to produce. And another of my brothers, an intellectual property lawyer, uncovers new case law depending on the client he will represent.

While every one of these projects relied on a foundational skill set, new skills and learning were acquired based on the needs of the project.

The learning took place through the project.

If, as teachers, we hope to create projects that reflect the way learning takes place in the ‘real world,’ we need to design experiences, assessments, and lessons that reflect real world learning.

Project-Based Learning at AIS

On October 21, 2020, these 24 incredible AIS Educators graduated from Kyle Wagner’s PBL Immersive Program and are now integrating their knowledge into their own units.

To learn more about the projects our AIS educators came up with, come back to this blog at the end of the year.

To read Kyle Wagner’s full blog ‘Doing Projects’ vs. Project-Based Learning: Five Questions to Improve Your PBL Experiences, go here.

Student: “Mr. Lee, can you help me?”

Teacher: “Sure, what can I help you with?”

Student: “I can’t open my snack, can you open it for me?”

Teacher: “Of course I can. Let me open it for you.”

Sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it? This is a daily conversation I had at recess with children at the beginning of every year. When a child asked for help, my reaction was to help them right away.

Until one day, I noticed a long line of children waiting for me to open their snacks. At that moment, I realized what I had done. I taught them to depend on me to help them solve their problems.

I knew what I had to do next, empower them to take agency when faced with challenges.

The following day, the conversation went a bit differently with the student. 

Student: “Mr. Lee, can you help me?”

Teacher: “Sure, what can I help you with?”

Student: “Can you help me open my snack?”

Teacher: “I have an idea, why don’t you give it a try?”

Student “But I did try and I can’t, It’s too hard.” (Attempts to tear the package apart)

Teacher: “Ok, what else could you try to open your snack?”

Student: “I can try to tear down instead of across.”

Teacher: “Great, why don’t you give it a try?”

(Tears down and the package opens)

Student: “I DID IT!! I opened my snack!”

High fives, fist bumps, and dancing followed and the student was onto the next challenge, feeling a great sense of pride.

Student agency is powerful. It provides them with the opportunity to face challenges with confidence. Students choose to try their own solutions first before looking for help.

We can support student agency by:

• Allowing children to experience productive struggle. Productive struggle is working towards a solution while experiencing some setbacks. These setbacks push children to rethink their approaches and persevere. 
• Allowing children time to practice the skills they are taught. By providing children more time, they feel safe when they need to try a task multiple times.
• Being patient. We need to work on being patient when we watch our children work. Our world’s pace has quickened dramatically causing us to feel overloaded and overwhelmed. Therefore, we sometimes feel that children need help to speed up the pace so we can accomplish our tasks.

Helping children become agents in their learning is a wonderful gift. Agency will help our children become successful problem solvers, communicators, and innovators. They will have the passion and drive to overcome challenges and learn new skills. Most of all, our children will change the world with the gift of agency.

As our global community continues to debate solutions to climate change and limited resources, we know with certainty that we are preparing our children for an unknown future.  Preparing children for the world ahead of them is a challenge all parents and educators face. Helping our children learn HOW to think instead of knowing WHAT to think is the key to their success and confidence as they navigate life experiences. Teaching them to look at problems creatively through different lenses encourages unique and sometimes wild solutions. The possibilities are endless, if we expose our children to diverse approaches toward learning. One approach is STEAM.

What is STEAM?

STEAM is an approach to learning in which science, technology, engineering, arts, and math are used as access points to guide student inquiry, problem-solving, creativity, and collaboration.

Why STEAM?

STEAM encourages children to…

• look at and inquire about real-world problems.
• find purpose through making connections.
• think about solutions.
• collaborate with peers.
• persevere and reflect on their solutions.

STEAM is our children’s key to saving the world and their future. More and more companies in the world use the STEAM mindset in their companies. Companies such as Apple and Google have created products like the iPhone and Gmail with this mindset.

AIS and STEAM

In November, students were given an opportunity to work on STEAM projects created by their teachers. The teachers worked on integrating the STEAM model into their science units to help students better connect to the concepts.

• Grade 1 Junior designed push and pull toys for our youngest group of children in EC1 and EC2.
• Grade 1 studied the sun by making shadow statues.
• Grade 2 observed plants growing with different environments.
• Grade 3 created websites that focused on being advocates for endangered animals.
• Grade 4 constructed and tested seismographs.

Students were collaborating with their peers, highly engaged in their learning, and working hard at solving problems they encountered. Classrooms were bustling with excitement and students were having fun learning and using what they learned to improve their projects.

Educational approaches such as STEAM brings hope for our future. They empower children to think critically, to take risks, be innovative, and to create unique solutions to the world’s problems.